#19 - Marcus Aurelius: Key Lessons from Meditations

Marcus Aurelius was one of the most powerful people in the ancient world, but his life was filled with war, plague, political instability, loss, and responsibility. During all of it, he kept writing private notes to himself about how to stay grounded, deal with difficult people, control his anger, accept what he couldn’t change, and live according to his values. Those writings eventually became Meditations, one of the most influential works of Stoic philosophy.

In this episode, I break down some of Marcus Aurelius’s biggest ideas and quotes, including the difference between what you can and can’t control, why “the obstacle becomes the way,” how our interpretation of events can create additional suffering, why remembering death can actually make life more meaningful, and why action matters more than endlessly thinking about the person you want to become. More than anything, this is an episode about how to handle setbacks, uncertainty, other people, and your own mind without letting every difficult situation throw you off course.

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What is up, everyone? Welcome back to BBTV. Thank you very much for joining me today. I'm talking about Marcus Aurelius. And Marcus Aurelius is one of those people where I feel like you've probably seen his quotes everywhere, even if you don't really know who he is. You'll see his quotes like on Instagram, you'll see them on motivational pages, you'll see them posted over, you know, like a picture of a marble statue with some dramatic music playing behind it on TikTok. And I knew vaguely that he was, you know, a Roman emperor and that he was associated with stoicism, but I didn't really know that much about his actual life or why anyone should necessarily care about what this guy had to say. He's an emperor, right? Um, like when you hear Roman Emperor, your first thought could very reasonably be kind of like how mine was this dude was probably ridiculously privileged. He's sitting in a palace, people are, you know, bringing him grapes, fanning him. He has unlimited money, servants, and you know, he's one of the most powerful people in the world. So why exactly would you take life advice from someone like that? But when you actually look at Marcus Aurelius' life, it becomes a lot more interesting than that. Because this guy's reign was honestly kind of a nightmare, and it wasn't like his fault. So he becomes an emperor in 161, 161 AD. And during his reign, the Roman Emperor is dealing with basically war after war. There are major wars in the east of Rome. There were wars along the northern frontier against Germanic tribes, and he ends up spending years away from Rome around military camps and frontier regions, basically trying to rally his, you know, his his country. Uh so there's also, and then there's also this absolutely devastating epidemic that goes through the emperor or that through the empire, um, what we now call the Antonine Plague, where just huge numbers of people die, the exact numbers are debated, obviously, um, because we're talking about second century, like so long ago, barely after Jesus, right? But the point is this is a massive epidemic. So Marcus also experienced a ridic uh and he also experienced a ridiculous amount of death personally. He and his wife had a bunch of children, many of them died before adulthood. Honestly, not that rare for that time, but later in his reign, one of his generals, um, I think is Cassius declared himself he declared that he was actually the emperor because apparently there was a rumor going around that Marcus had died somehow. So Marcus was dealing, but so just picture it. Marcus is dealing with war, disease, death, political instability. He's dealing with internal betrayal, and he's running this enormous empire. And while all of this is happening, he's writing notes to himself. He's keeping a journal that basically is multiple books that he had. And those notes, eventually, these this kind of all of his documentation that he was writing down throughout this entire life of his becomes distilled and funneled down into now what we call meditations, which is probably something that you've heard of before if you're ever on like self-help TikTok or self-help reels, whatever it might be. And I think this is really important because Meditations was not written to be like a self-help help uh self-help book, right? Like Marcus Aurelius was not sitting there thinking, okay, what what are 10 habits for success? How can I create a bestseller? What do I do to create my personal brand? It was all of this stuff was private. And as far as we know, he didn't write this because he thought people 2,000 years ago were going to be reading it. It was it was all internal, all to himself, to remind him how to live his life best, basically. Things that seemed to recur over and over in his mind while he was trying to navigate all of these massive challenges. And I actually think that makes this book like way more interesting because when you notice that he repeats himself, it feels less like, oh, like, you know, this is a guy who's mastered life and is now teaching anyone out teaching everyone else how to do what he did. It's actually that this is a guy who is constantly having to remind himself of the same things over and over because he struggles with them too. He has to remind himself, for instance, not to get angry. He has to remind himself that he's going to die. He has to remind himself not to care so much about what other people think, uh, that he can't control everything. He has to remind himself to actually get out of bed and do his job, which is, you know, pretty hilarious because he was literally the emperor of Rome. And he wakes up and he's like, Yeah, like I don't want to go to work today, just like everyone does. And then he has to basically use these philosophical philosophical frameworks to convince himself to get up and go do his thing. So I want to go through some of his biggest ideas in meditations, mostly through quotes and passages from Marcus himself, because I feel like that's the best way to understand what his actual philosophy was. And then kind of talk through these ideas and what they can mean for people now, because some of them do seem, I mean, some of them are like comically simple, but when you actually start applying them in your own life, they can get a lot deeper. So, first one, you control your mind, not everything else. This is probably the most famous Marcus Aurelius idea, and it's basically you have power over your mind, but not outside events, which is one of the big general themes of his stuff. And once you realize this, according to him, you find strength. Now, depending on the translation that you get of meditations, the exact wording changes, but this is, again, one of the most fundamental ideas also in stoicism. And it sounds stupidly simple, right? You can control some things, you can't control other things, focused on the things you can't control. You can hear you hear this stuff. You hear this all the time. But actually think about how much time you spend mentally fighting things that you have absolutely no control over, right? If someone doesn't like you, you can't force them to like you. Say you're a content creator of video flops, you can't go into the algorithm and demand that TikTok pushes your videos. If someone says something rude to you, you can't go backward in time and make them not say it. If you get rejected from a job you applied for, you can't force that company to hire you. It starts raining, you know, like when you go and do something outside, you can't negotiate with the weather. It goes on and it goes on and on and on. And yet we spend so much mental energy basically going, you know, this shouldn't have happened. This person shouldn't be doing this, this situation should be different. And Marcus is basically saying, okay, but it isn't that. So now what do you do? And that, so now what is basically where your power is. You don't control the event, but you control what comes next. And I think this is an important distinction because stoicism sometimes gets interpreted as basically don't have emotions, nothing matters, be completely cold. If something horrible happens, just shrug it off. But that isn't really the point. You can obviously feel things. Marcus Aurelius clearly felt things, had emotions. He writes about anger constantly, about grief, frustrations, uh, dealing with difficult people. The idea is not to prevent your emotions from being felt. The idea is to stop treating your emotional response as if it is the same thing as the event itself. So if something happens and then, so something happens, right? And then there is what you do with it. And those are so something happens, what you do with it, two completely different things, and it connects directly to another one of his ideas that kind of builds on it, which is probably one of my favorites here. It says the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way. Or if you break that down more simply, the obstacle is the way. And remember when I remember when I first heard this, I was like, okay, it sounds cool, whatever, but you know, what does that actually mean? It's kind of confusing because if something is blocking your path, how is the thing blocking your path somehow also the path? But the more I I thought about this one, kind of break the more you break it down, I feel like the more you'll actually like it. So basically, the thing that you think is preventing you from becoming the person that you want to become is often the exact thing that you have to work through in order to become that person, right? So it's kind of simple, but it kind of doesn't make sense. So imagine like you want to start a side business, right? And you're like, okay, I really want to start something, I want to make money on the side, eventually I want to work for myself, whatever. But then you say, you know, I don't, you know, I have no idea what business I want to start. I you know, I have no, I have no ideas here. And so you treat that as an obstacle and a lot of times, you know, an insurmountable obstacle. And kind of the mentality is that, you know, once you figure out what to start, once you figure out what business it is that you're gonna create or what you're gonna do, then you can begin your journey of starting a business, right? But Marcus's perspective would basically be no, figuring out what to start is the beginning. Researching ideas, trying things, building something that sucks, realizing nobody wants it, you know, the thought process of thinking, oh, what do I want to start? Trying something else, talking to people, learning how to, you know, sell or do something like that, learning what people will actually pay for, market research. That confusion is not standing in the way of entrepreneurship. Like the lack of clarity around these things, these questions you have, that is not standing in your way. That is the thing. Like that's not in your way of being an entrepreneur. That is entrepreneurship. There's no magic part after where everything becomes obvious and you know you're you're smooth sailing. And it's, you know, same thing, like let's use content creation. You might say, okay, I want to build a successful YouTube channel, but I don't know what YouTube videos to make, right? I don't have a, I don't have a niche yet. I don't have an I don't have a niche that people like. Okay. Well, learning how to come up with good ideas and build a niche is literally most of what it takes to become a good creator. So you don't, you there's no way to just skip over that. You can't find a niche without trying to find a niche, right? Or you might say, on like another example, you know, maybe you're struggling, okay, like I'm struggling to make videos consistently. Okay, well, learning how to make videos consistently is the path to make is like that's making videos consistently is figuring that out. Another just one more example just to hammer this in because this was this was kind of confusing for me. So say, you know, videos keep failing, okay. Learning why they fail, learning how to, you know, create an effective hook, how to tell stories better, learning topics that people care about the actual process, the road does not start after the struggle, right? The struggle is the road. And you can apply this to like almost almost anything. If you want to build muscle, the weight isn't getting in the way of you becoming stronger, the weight is how you become stronger. That one isn't as obvious, but you know, if you want to become more socially confident, uncomfortable social situations are not what is in between you and confidence. Going through those uncomfortable situations is how you build that confidence. If you want patience, annoying people are your opportunity to practice patience, not you know, the the uh the thing that's in the way. You can't, you know, practice patience in a world where there's nobody that ever annoys you because then it doesn't exist. So you can't, you know, practice courage if you're never afraid. You can't become resilient if nothing ever goes wrong. So, Marcus, you get the point. The obstacle becomes the way. So, moving on, another uh passage from Marcus that I really like is basically if you are distressed by something external, it is not the thing itself disturbing you, but your judgment about it. And you have the ability to change that judgment. And this one needs some qualification because obviously external things can cause real pain, right? If someone breaks your leg, you don't just go, okay, this actually only hurts because I'm interpreting it as pain, which I mean, you know, that is kind of true. It is your brain's interpretation, but largely no, your leg is broken, it's gonna hurt. What Marcus is talking about here is the mental suffering that gets layered on top of events. So imagine two people are applying for like the same job, right? Uh both get rejected, same event happens to both people. But one person says, okay, you know, that sucks. But you know, maybe the interview wasn't good. I'll just go and apply for somewhere, someone, so uh, you know, another job. But the person, the second person, exact same email and thinks, oh my gosh, like I'm a failure. I haven't, I don't have enough experience. No one is really ever gonna hire me. Everyone else, everyone else is getting ahead of me. I'm wasting my life. I'm, you know, I'm I'm never gonna be successful. It's I'm gonna have to work some some crap job. And, you know, these are these are mental loops that we can all go through, but kind of notice what happens there. The company sends, you know, two people the same same email, but one person has converted the event into like an entire theory about their existence and who they are. The rejection happened, but then you add this huge, it's like this story that goes on top of it, and the pain that you're experiencing is in the story. The suffering comes from the story, not necessarily from the event. Another example here, imagine someone isn't texting you back. I'm sure we've all had this happen or have had a friend who's had this happen too. So the physical reality, right, is you sent a text, there's currently no response. That's that's it. That's like literally all there is to it. It's not much. But then your brain might go, oh, like they're ignoring me, or they're mad at me. I said something wrong. They don't respect me, they're talking to someone else if it's like a relational thing, whatever it might be. And then two hours they text and they're like, Oh, like sorry, I was like taking a nap. And all of a sudden, like all of that suffering disappears. But the suffering was, you know, completely real while you're experiencing it, right? You were, you know, overthinking it, getting anxious and all of this stuff, having physical responses to this, but it just came from an interpretation that for one just you know ended up not being true. And this is kind of what Marcus is trying to get at. You need to separate what actually happened from what am I adding onto this. And I feel like it's extremely useful because your brain loves stories, right? We think in stories essentially. Something happens and immediately your brain has to decide what it means. That's what your brain does, right? It decides what things mean. But sometimes it doesn't mean nearly as much as you really think it does. Okay, so moving on, the next one is a little bit depressing, but it's, you know, also kind of a recurring theme among successful people. Steve Jobs talked about this in his Stanford address that's really famous. Basically, this one is that you're going to die. It's just, you know, it's another theme that's extremely prevalent in meditations, which is death. He, Marcus, thinks about death constantly, just like a lot of us do subconsciously. And one of his famous reminders is basically you could leave your life right now. Let that determine what you do, say, and think, which sounds incredibly depressing if you read it like, okay, like, you know, like, you know, good morning, remember, you're gonna die today. Have fun. That's you know, that's not the point is almost the exact opposite of that, actually. He's using death to kind of strip away all of the stupid stuff because you have a limited amount of time, you don't know exactly how much. So, how much of it are you gonna spend caring about things that ultimately don't matter at all? You get into an argument with someone online or like a random person, you spend, you know, an hour thinking about what they said about you, a negative comment that you got. But you know, this person might not even know you, and you don't know them in a hundred years, you're both gonna be gone. So, why are you even doing this? Or, you know, something that happened five years ago that keeps coming up in your head, you're still replaying it. You know, you're gonna die, they're gonna die. Every pertinent person who's witnessing this embarrassing thing is eventually gonna die. At some point, literally nobody on earth will remember that it happened, and that point isn't that too far away. And, you know, so you can look at this in a way that's not really depressing, but instead look at it in a way that's kind of freeing, and especially when you think about the fact that Marcus Aurelius was an emperor, right? So even he was like, you know, my legacy is not gonna last forever. You know, you could be the, you know, you can be the emperor of Rome, and even then your decisions and things like that, like they're not gonna be around. They're not, you know, they're they're not gonna be around forever. Like, who cares? You know, you can't build your life around whether people are going to remember you because eventually, you know, everything changes, right? Everything moves on, which is the bridge into the next part of his kind of thought pattern, which is that everything changes. Marcus Aurelius constantly talks about impermanence, how everything is changing. People change, your body change, uh, your body changes, cities change, empires change, relationships change, your reputation changes, emotions change, problems change, and eventually everything just disappears, right? And like, and and again, might seem nihilistic, but for Marcus, it actually seems to have the opposite effect. If something is if something good is happening, appreciate it because you know it's it's gonna change, right? So enjoy it while it lasts. But if something bad is happening, also remember that that's gonna change too. You I mean, you can think about like any terror like think about a terrible period in your life, maybe like right after you went through a breakup or something happened, like your dog died. Like while you're in it, it feels so horrible. But then six months later, you're you move on, you're dealing with problems that are completely different. And the thing that you were thinking about every day, every night, you know, it doesn't cross your mind like hardly at all. Same with, you know, obviously that goes the same with good things. You can have some incredible, like an incredible period of your life, and eventually it just becomes something that happened. Um, Marcus is basically Aurelius is just constantly trying to zoom out. And think zooming out is one of the best ways to describe stoicism in general, honestly. Uh your brain naturally wants to do the opposite and zoom all the way in. Like one embarrassing moment becomes everything, one rejection becomes everything, one bad day becomes, you know, like this is my life, my life sucks. And Marcus is trying to combat that and zoom all the way back out. You say, you know, this happened, but it's temporary. You yourself are temporary, and the people who caused it are also temporary. So what what do you do now? Okay, and then so moving on now. The next one is to stop arguing. Basically, what he says is the quote is waste no time arguing what a good man should be, be one. And this is again, a lot of his things are kind of like they seem trite, right? They seem like, you know, like obviously like whatever. It seems so simple. But I think that this one in particular is extremely relevant now, if you frame it right, because we live in this world where you can spend all day consuming information on how to live, right? Like if you're on like billionaire mindset, TikTok. You can listen to podcasts, read books, scroll on TikTok, watch motivational videos, watch productivity videos, read philosophy, watch philosophy videos. You can use AI to talk about how you can maximize your potential or you can create a perfect workout plan, it can a business plan, a morning routine, diet. And basically the point that Marcus is making is like, all right, just do it. You know, you understand enough, like go live it. You can't just keep consuming this media. You don't need uh a 14th video explaining how discipline works. You just need to go and do what you're supposed to do. Like it's in the action, right? And I feel like this is actually also becoming harder now because learning about something like it feels productive, right? Like if you're planning something, if you're talking about something that's positive that you're going to do that, all that feels productive, but none of those things are doing it, right? None of them are actually doing the thing. You can spend three hours learning how to make a successful YouTube channel, but at the end of those, you know, three hours, you've uploaded zero videos, or you know, you you say you spend, you know, three hours prompting AI on how to make your videos better. You haven't you haven't done anything, right? Someone who knows way less might have already uploaded three videos and they've actually learned something real. Like, so who's actually moved forward in that situation? Basically, the synopsis is something that's again very, very common, but he's saying that your philosophy should show up through your behavior. It doesn't matter if you can explain all of the ins and outs of what courage is. Do you actually act courageous? You know, people, everyone nowadays, because of you know, billion the billionaire mindset side of TikTok, can explain what discipline is and how you get it, but are you actually disciplined? It doesn't matter if you have, you know, theories of anything like you know, kindness, happiness, whatever. Are you kind to people? Are you are you actually happy? Stop. The idea is to stop debating the definition of the good life and just go and live one, or you know, the the life that you want to live and you need to just go and live it. So anyway, that's uh there's obviously a lot more to meditations than that. If you've enjoyed this video, please let me know. I'd be happy to make a part two. There's other things that he wrote about on like revenge and anger and uh like your reputation, all sorts of things that are that are very relevant, you know, overcoming laziness. But I think that those are some of the key takeaways and a good introduction just to Marcus Aurelius and his general framing. And if you apply honestly the ones that I went over here to like all of the other aspects of your life, or all of the other aspects that he talks of, those are the ones that are probably the most encompassing with respect to his ideals. So I hope you enjoyed listening to this. If you're coming from another platform, I've been I've been experimenting a lot, like Marcus Aurelius says, I've been on the path trying to overcome obstacles. I've been doing a lot of iterations on how I'm making my videos. So if you have any feedback or if you want to hear more about a certain subject or anything, please feel free to leave a comment here. Leave a comment on any of my other socials. Let me know what you think. I really love to uh learn and see what can be improved in my process and make this better for you guys. I'm learning a lot as I make these videos. I hope you guys are too. So thank you very, very much if you've made it to the end of this video or the end of this podcast, and have a great day. Bye.