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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a

meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life.

And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful.

With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives.

But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

You never know what someone is going through. People are frustrating. They fall short. They fail us. They do something that surprises or disappoints you.

But before you get angry, you have to remember everyone is going through something. Sometimes people are going through things they don't even know about.

NBA All-Star Kevin Love began suffering panic attacks several years into his career that severely affected his game.

Mental health is not something that gets talked about a lot in professional sports. So for a long time, love struggled with this private demon alone.

It wasn't until he began to share his story publicly that he discovered that other players battled with all sorts of mental health issues.

Before that, it didn't even occur to love that he wasn't alone that other players also had issues.

We all do this. Our natural absorption inclines us to assume that we're the only people to have a good reason to be tired, angry, frustrated, scared or hardened.

So we rob ourselves of the empathy of others. We close ourselves off from the opportunity to become personally much more empathetic, both of which Kevin Love experienced when he started to share his struggle.

Seneca reminds us that a leader should grant pardon but ask for none, that they should make excuses for other people because of what they're going through, but not themselves.

Marcus Aurelius tried constantly to put himself in other people's shoes, particularly those who snipe at him or made his life more difficult.

He tried to understand what made them act the way they did, because he wanted to be able to forgive them, because he wanted to be able to offer them leeway for their failings to be able to make use of their strengths where possible.

And this is all a much better alternative to walking around either beating yourself up because you're the lone loser, weakling or head case, or assuming the worst of everyone in granted no forgiveness or tolerance for not being at your level.

Remember, everyone is going through something.

They might not even be aware of that, just as it took you a while to figure out what was troubling you. So cut your fellow humans some slack, grant pardon, even if they struggle to do that for you in turn.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I have been starting to fool around with the next book. I started about a week and a half ago, laying out all the note cards.

I was starting to doubt myself. I was starting to get worried. I was intimidated by the project. I wasn't sure if it was going in the right direction. And then I found this note card that I'd wrote and slipped into the box. I don't know when.

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