Ryan Holiday

Stoicism is more than 2,000 years old.

The philosophy was developed in ancient Greece and Rome by thinkers such as Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. Their writings have survived for centuries, studied by academics, philosophers and anyone interested in how to live a good life.

But for most people, Stoicism remained just that, an ancient philosophy.

Ryan Holiday helped change that.

He didn't invent Stoicism. He didn't even particularly modernise its fundamental ideas. What he did was make them accessible.

One of the clearest examples is a video in which Holiday takes nine lessons from Marcus Aurelius and turns them into practical rules for modern life.

It is difficult to imagine a better demonstration of what Holiday has spent much of his career doing.

The ideas aren't new. The way they're delivered is.

Holiday understood that the problem wasn't necessarily a lack of good ideas. It was that good ideas often remain trapped in books.

His work has largely been an exercise in translation.

Ancient philosophy becomes a practical lesson. A passage from Marcus Aurelius becomes something you might think about on the way to work. An idea from Epictetus becomes a way of approaching a difficult conversation, a failed project or an uncertain future.

He has built an entire body of work around this process.

And there is something worth noticing in that.

We tend to associate originality with creating something that didn't exist before. But sometimes the more valuable work is taking something that already exists and making it better understood.

Holiday found one thing worth pursuing, Stoicism, and spent years refining the way it could be communicated to a modern audience.

That focus has taken an ancient philosophy from the pages of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca into bestselling books, podcasts, newsletters and the daily routines of millions of people.

Perhaps that is the real lesson.

You don't always need a new idea.

Sometimes you just need to find a good one and do the work of making it useful.