Podcast Listener (6:54)

I guess my question is, it's very interesting, you being a clearly more left leaning person in the self help space, that it's not inherently political, but I feel like these days more and more kind of there's sort of a, like a kind of stigma around it, like it being more kind of right leaning, like the grind set mentality, I guess, if you know what I mean. I'm just curious, like how does that impact your work and how does that impact the way that you try to present yourself?

Ryan Holiday (7:26)

I guess, yeah, I don't think that much about it. I just try to say what I think and do what I think is right. I have tried not to be radicalized by what's happening in the world and also not radicalized by what I read and see on the Internet. I feel like I haven't changed that much, except for maybe the way that stoicism slowly works on you. I think I came to stoicism for the reason that a lot of young men come to it. Maybe you came to it about how it can make you stronger, faster, smarter, whatever, all of that. But there is, as I said, a strong ethical component. Its ethical core is this idea of justice, this idea of the common good, this idea that we're made for each other, this idea that if it's Bad for the world, it's bad for us, and vice versa. And how do we think about this? I don't have a good answer for why that is left coded these days. It seems pretty basic. Like a basic part of just being a not shitty person. But I don't see myself as a particularly polite political person. I think most of what I talk about has to do with like, basic social contract stuff, like just what our obligations are to our fellow human beings, what our basic constitutional rights and freedoms are. That's kind of what where I think about it. I'm not like we should vote for this law and that law and this policy and that. That's not usually what I talk about. Sometimes I do if I'm talking to my friends or whatever, but for the most part, I'm talking about these at, I think, the high level, our philosophical obligations. That's kind of how I think about it, but thank you.

Podcast Listener (9:08)

Stoicism seems to explore the mind and body connection. So I'm curious, when you're speaking, do you make a distinction between when you're speaking from your head and your heart?

Ryan Holiday (9:19)

That's a good question. I don't know. I guess I wouldn't know exactly what the difference is. I don't think about it that much, so maybe that means I'm in my body, not in my head. I do think that when you are in a flow state, when you are locked in, that's where good performance comes from. It's not a super conscious, deliberate thing, but it is also the result of the deliberate practice and training that precedes it. And I think that's true both on a basic performance level. We're talking about writing or playing music or shooting a basketball. But I think it's also true for these ideas of virtue, too. What do you do in the moment? You don't sit down and weigh all the options. Like, I was curious when I was talking to Kyle how much thinking went into the decision to jump on a grenade. And the answer usually is not much at all. Because he's not just trained for it, literally. But there's a spiritual tradition and an idea and a mindset that they learn about and hear about and come deeply to believe in. And the idea is that in the moment, you do the thing Epictetus said, like, the whole point of philosophy is so that whatever happens in life, you can go, this is what I trained for. But I think it's actually not even that. That's like, afterwards you go, oh, I trained for that. But in the moment, you do what the training says you should do in your opening.

Podcast Listener (10:48)

When you're talking about courage, one of the things that you raised was the need to be our authentic selves, even if it comes to us at a cost. And you gave example of the person standing up to Nero.

Ryan Holiday (11:04)

I forgot his name already.

Podcast Listener (11:06)

How does that apply? What is your perspective on establishing close personal relationships?

Ryan Holiday (11:16)

Sure.

Podcast Listener (11:16)

Is that a different standard of or.

Ryan Holiday (11:20)

I don't know how close a personal relationship can be if it's not based on your authentic self. Right. If you're pretending to be someone for someone else's sake, that's probably not a good foundation of a relationship. But, you know, it's funny, in the uk, a few years ago, there was this guy who was just kind of a jerk. He didn't bathe, he didn't take care of himself. He was rude to his co workers, he said inappropriate things at the office. He. And then finally he was fired and he sued. And in his lawsuit, he said, you know, he was being discriminated against for his religion, which was stoicism, and he was just indifferent to all these things. Although the Stoics do have a bit of the cynic tradition in them, sort of not caring about certain conventions or, you know, superficial things. The Stoics were functioning members of society and being in a functional relationship. I don't think you always say everything that pops into your head, especially because this is, I think, a big part of stoicism. It's not that you don't think it, it's that you think it in this moment because you're upset, because you're worried, you're frustrated, you're reacting. And I think stoicism is this idea of, like, I can have the opinion, the impression, the initial thought, but I don't have to do it. And maybe I'm not going to do it if it's not actually important and it's going to needlessly hurt someone's feelings. So I think the Stoics are functioning members of society, which means empathy and compassion and connection and wearing clothes and things like that.

Ryan Holiday (12:56)

Hi, Ryan. Hi. What do you feel the difference is.

Podcast Listener (13:00)

Between wisdom and intelligence?

Ryan Holiday (13:03)

Yeah, I think that's kind of the ultimate question. There are obviously lots of really smart people who are good at one thing or good at a handful of things. And then I don't know if we would classify them as wise. There are obviously also ways in which wise and smart people can do very stupid things. And one of the ideas in the book is like, okay, here's all the ways that we acquire and move towards wisdom. And then. And the middle part of the book is all about how we acquire or move towards stupidity. All the ways that we make ourselves foolish by the information that we consume. Things like ego, things like not taking care of ourselves. It doesn't matter how smart and studied you are, if you're not sleeping at some point, you're cognitively equivalent to a drunk person. If you are burning yourself out, you're obviously not going to to be wise. If you we all our mind is our friend. It's how we get wisdom. And then our mind is also riddled with cognitive biases that we have to be aware of. And then of course there's this idea of self awareness also. You can be aware of a lot of things, but if you don't have self awareness, that's a big problem. That's what was inscribed at the temple of Apollo, right? This idea of knowing myself. So how many people can you say you've got ever met in your life who you would define as truly self aware? It's kind of a rare elusive thing. So to me, intelligence is important. It's very necessary. And then wisdom has to be somewhere beyond that. Just like, you know, all the virtues, I think, exist on kind of a spectrum, as Aristotle would say. So just as maybe there's a distinction between bravery and courage and heroism.

Ryan Holiday (14:49)

Right.

Ryan Holiday (14:49)

Spectrum. I think wisdom, we want to say, is towards the end of the spectrum and it's the hardest and rarest of them.

Ryan Holiday (15:00)

Just to let you know, I'm going to be doing three more live dates in the coming months. I'd love to see you in Seattle, Washington on December 3, San Diego on February 5, and Phoenix, Arizona on February 27. The talk in Austin sold out my tour last year. Sold out. So grab these tickets while you can. I did a wonderful talk back in Seattle with Robert Greene, which was one of my favorites. So I'm going to be there. You can ask me questions and I'll be talking stoicism and the ideas in the new book. Just go to daily stoiclive.com hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast.

Ryan Holiday (15:46)

I just wanted to say we so appreciate it.

Ryan Holiday (15:49)

We love serving you.

Ryan Holiday (15:50)

It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything.

Ryan Holiday (16:01)

I just wanted to say thank you.

Podcast Listener (16:12)

Not great with finances.

Ryan Holiday (16:13)

That's okay.

Podcast Listener (16:14)

Experian is your big financial friend. Explore credit card offers, some labeled no ding decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. See Experian Applying for Noting Declined cards won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved.

Ryan Holiday (16:24)

2025 Experian Experian look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came to here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to Dailystoic.com premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.