MASTER THE MORNING - Marcus Aurelius Guide to Start Your Day BEST

According to every single self-help guru and motivational speaker, key to success is by starting your day off correctly. How do you start off your day correctly? Well, the Stoics had a method, more importantly, Marcus Aurelius wrote down in his personal diary, methods in which he used to start his day off on the right foot. So I'll explain that in this video. Welcome back to The Everyday Stoic. I'm William Mulligan and today I'll be sharing with you morning rituals and routines that Marcus Aurelius himself used to start off his day on the right step. And that right step at the start of your day will hopefully carry on and lead you throughout the day to have a good day. So I hope you enjoy. Today's video is sponsored by www.theeverydaystoic.com where you can get the Amor Fati t-shirt. Amor Fati means the love of one's fate. It's just a reminder to love your fate and the fate that you're given. So I hope you enjoy the video. I'm going to be reading various texts from Stoic literature. I'll read the text, explain it a little bit and then read the next one. And then towards the end of the video, I'll make a brief summary. Hopefully it'll be quick so that you can quickly get an understanding of how Emperor Marcus Aurelius started his days off on the right foot. At break of day, when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready to mind. I am getting up for man's work. Do I still then resent it if I am going out to do what I was born for, the purpose for which I was brought into the world? Or was I created to wrap myself in blankets and keep warm? But this is more pleasant. Were you not then born for pleasure or for feeling, not for action? Can you not see plants, birds, ants, spiders, bees all do their own work, each helping in their own way to order the world? And then do you not want to do the work of human beings? You do not hurry to demand of your own nature, but one needs to rest too. One does indeed, I agree. But nature has set limits to this, just as it has to eating and drinking. And yet you go beyond these limits, beyond what you need, not in your actions, though not any longer. Here you stay below your capability. The point is that you do not love yourself. Otherwise, you would love both your own nature and have purpose for it. Other men love their own pursuit and absorb themselves in its performance to the exclusion of bath and food. But you have less regard for your own nature than the smith has for his metalwork, the dancer for his dancing and the money grubber for his money, the exhibitionist for the little moments of fame. Yet these people, when impassioned, give up food and sleep for the promotion of their pursuits. And you think social action less important, less worthy of effort. So Marx Aurelius is saying that at every instance in the day, you must remember your own nature. And nature of humans is to do good, to be good, to be good for themselves, for others and for society around them. You need to think that I could either lay in bed, comfortable for this brief amount of time, or I can go and pursue these things. And at the end of the day, you'll always be grateful that you did all these things rather than just lay in bed. You need to think back over days where you've been productive. And you've had one of those days where you smashed everything out of the park, made deep connections with people. You was productive in your health. You made steps forward in your pursuits, your goals. End of the day, you laid in bed and you thought, wow, that was a good day, I was very productive. And when you're laying in bed, just clinging to your pillow, warm, because you don't want to face that brief instance of being a bit tired, being a bit cold when you have to walk from the bed to getting changed. You need to remember, you know, is that feeling I had at the end of a productive day better than the feeling I'll get from laying here? And then, is it better than the feeling of regret I may feel later when I have not acted on man's nature? So that is the first passage that explains a little bit about the morning ritual. As soon as you wake from sleep, ask yourself, will it make any difference to you if others criticise what is in fact just and true? No, it will not. You have surely not forgotten what these people who whinny in praise or blame of others are like in their bed and at board. The sort of things they do and avoid or pursue, they're cheating and stealing, not with hands and feet, but with the most precious parts of themselves, the part where, if allowed, there grows trust, decency, truth, law, and the spirit of goodness. So this is something you should ask yourself when you wake, is will it make any difference to you if others criticise what is in fact just and true? So, like I say, the Stoics were seekers of truth. The truth can do no harm because that is the truth. That is the law of the nature. That is the law of the cosmic nature of the universe. And we can't change this. It's something that is outside of our control. All the truth can tell us is perhaps when someone gives us truth in criticism, places where we can improve, places where we can change, things that we can do to act upon these truths. So when you ask yourself this thing in the morning, when these people who speak these truths, that criticise you to speak the truth, we prepare ourselves for meeting these people. And we've already prepared ourselves, we've built our resilience to meet these people that may criticise us. If it's true, then it's true. We can use it to improve our lives. But if false, if these people are criticising us to bring us down, we must understand, first of all, we've prepared for this. We are ready to meet with this criticism. We must understand that these people, we can't take their words as ideas that we must follow. Maybe we don't know. As Marcus Aurelius says, you have surely not forgotten what these people who win it in praise or blame of others are like in their bed and at board and the sort of things they do and avoid or pursue and they're cheating and stealing. We must understand that these people, we don't have to take their words as guidance for our life. If it's true, then yes, we may. But when they say these things, we must understand that these people may be lying. They may be upset, frustrated, angry. There's so many reasons behind the words that they say that are pushing these words. And sometimes you have to look at why they're even saying these things. Maybe they're hurt. Maybe they're criticising you to make themselves feel better. So that's the thing in the morning. You prepare yourself to meet these people. Book six of the meditations. Sober up. Recall yourself. Shake off sleep once more. Realise they were mere dreams that troubled you. And now that you're awake again, look on these things as if you would have looked on a dream. So when you wake up, you may have a nightmare. You may have a dream that's troubling you, causing some stress. But after a while of being awake, you sober up, you build up some clarity and you understand that was just a dream. Boxer Elias is saying that we should treat problems like this. You know, we tend to add weight to a problem by dwelling on these problems and summing up the worst that could happen. Making a mountain out of a molehill. Making a monster out of something that really needn't scare us. And the Stoics had a method called the view from above, which I've explained in other videos. But it's the way to see the world from a higher point of view and looking how small we are and how much is going on around us in the world and realising that we're just a mere fraction in this universe. We're a mere fraction in this time of the universe and we shouldn't dwell on things too long and create monsters out of small problems. The key points I got from Boxer Elias in his notes, these notes were written solely for him by himself as he led Rome, one of the greatest empires, and he's considered one of the greatest emperors to ever live, one of the most powerful men that ever lived. He wrote these notes on sleep and on mornings to help him in the morning. These things he could ask himself and tell himself. And there is another thing that the Stoics like to tell themselves. Well, there's actually two things the Stoics like to tell themselves every morning and throughout the day, in fact, which is memento mori and amor fati. And I'm sure most people watching this know what memento mori and amor fati mean, but I'll just quickly explain it. Memento mori is the reminder that we are mortal. It translates into remember death or remember your own mortality. And keeping this at the forefront of your mind, when you wake up, you remember memento mori. You understand that life is so precious. Every moment you have could be your last. Everything that you have could end right there. Belongings, people, they could end. Memento mori, remember death. These things will never last forever. Everything is borrowed. So it just creates a gratitude, a deep gratitude for everything you have. And the other thing you can ask yourself every morning is amor fati. It's the reminder to love your own fate. And it's the t-shirt I'm wearing right now. You understand that everything that comes your way has been given to you by the universe, whether you believe in God or not. It's the law of the universe. These things happen regardless, and they will continue to happen, and they come into your life, and you cannot stop them. So everything that comes into your life, you love it. You say, amor fati. I love the fate that is given to me. And that helps you just take life with more gratitude and take power of your life. Really stand straight and not be held straight, as the Stoics said. Marcus Aurelius had a strong belief that we had a nature to follow, human nature of being a good person. And one thing he liked to impress is that we always needed aim, that we needed a goal to work towards. So when you wake up, you see that goal, and you go towards it. You can't wander through life aimlessly, because if you're in your mind, you want to hit some target, you know, you want your dream job, you want your dream health, you want your dream position, anything that you want, you want this dream that you're trying to attain. But it's just in your mind, and you wander around life aimlessly. Marcus Aurelius really impressed on the fact that you need a goal, you need an aim, and every day you need to walk towards an aim or aims, rather than just wandering aimlessly and not fulfilling your nature. Another thing I'd say is to keep a journal or a notebook, and you write down your goal, your aim. And when you wake up, you just look at that aim, and you work towards it. And even if you don't hit this aim, you've made direction towards it, you've made progress towards it, that you would never make. You know, I'm a strong believer in taking the smallest step every day, and that tiny step is so much more powerful than just wandering around. If you want to achieve your dream fitness goal, your dream health goal, or the dream lifting goal, something you want that's revolving around health and well-being, you know, most people would say, hit this programme perfectly, and you will achieve it. But, you know, some people struggle to even leave the house to get to the gym, because they're so self-conscious this, it's hard for them to even get to the gym. So you write the goal of your dream fitness goal, but then you have all these steps in between, and one of them might be just setting up a gym kit, and putting it, setting it up, putting it near the door. And, you know, you've built, you've got this kit ready, so maybe you'll go to the gym, or maybe you'll just walk around the block, or you might walk into your garden, or you might do some press-ups in your living room. These small steps are so much more powerful than just wandering around saying, I'll do the perfect step one day. Writing down your goals is very powerful. I recommend this journal, and the link is in the bio. And I use this journal every day, just write down some goals, and tick them off. I think humans have some weird reward system where just ticking off a goal makes you feel good, makes you feel like you're creating progress in your life. So write down a list of goals, and you get a lot more done than you think. But I've noticed if you don't write those goals down, you'll never get them done, or you might get some done. Writing down your goals is very powerful, and if you do it in the morning, it starts your day off correctly. I hope you enjoyed today's video. Comment down your best bit of advice for mornings. I'd like to know what you think. I feel like I'm gonna get a lot of comments about have a good cup of coffee or something, because that's what I like to do, have a nice cup of coffee. It's a great start today. It tastes nice, and they give you a little kick. Thank you for watching. If you'd like to support what I'm doing, then please consider becoming a YouTube member, subscribing, leaving a comment, heading over to my Instagram, that's The Everyday Stoic, where I share modern and ancient stoic teachings and quotes. I do Q&As, stoic memes. Thank you for watching. Hope you have a great day.