Ryan Holiday (3:27)

Up before it's too late.

Ryan Holiday (3:28)

Dailystoic.com challenge I will see you in there.

Toyota Trucks Voiceover (3:41)

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Ryan Holiday (4:09)

Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basto County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought, this isn't going to work. Stopped, parked it walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaid roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven it across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids, who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota Adventure Detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory. Learn more@toyota.com Trucks Adventure detours.

Ryan Holiday (5:46)

Stake your own claim. This is the December 22 entry in the Daily Stoic, and our quote today comes to us from Seneca. Moral letters 33 for it's disgraceful for an old person, or one in sight of old age to have only the knowledge carried in their notebooks. Zeno said this, but what do you say? Cleanthes said this. What do you say, how long will you be compelled by the claims of another? Take charge and stake your own claim, something posterity will carry in its notebook. Musing in his own notebook about the topic of immortality, Emerson complained about how writers dance around a difficult topic by relying on quotes. I hate quotation, he wrote, tell me what you know. I'm going to tell you a little backstory about that in a second. Seneca was throwing down the same gauntlet some 20 centuries before. It's easier to quote, to rely on the wise words of others, especially when people you're deferring to are such towering figures. It's harder and more intimidating to venture out on your own, to express your own thoughts. But how do you think those wise and true quotes from those towering figures were created in the first place? Your own experiences have value. You have accumulated your own wisdom too. Stake your claim. Put something down for the ages, in words and also in example. So I was maybe like, 20, 21 years old. I was writing for the college newspaper, and I'd written this review, and I published it and did okay. And then I actually heard from the person I was reviewing in it. You know, they gave me some feedback, and I said, hey, could we, like, get on the phone? I would really. I just want to grow as a writer. Can you give me some feedback? And they're going through it, and he was just pointing out all the quotes in it, and he gave me that Emerson quotation for the first time. He said, Emerson said something like, I hate quotation. Tell me what you know. And that lesson has stuck with me in all of my writings. Yes, I talk about the Stoics. My writing is influenced and is in many ways an attempt to introduce the Stoics to people. But one of the passes that I do on my own books, as I go through them, after I've written them, I write them. Just what do I want to say? What's my supporting arguments? How do I want to illustrate it? And then I go through, and I go, where am I over relying on quotes here? Where can I get rid of them? Where am I over arguing things or not telling you what I know, but telling you what someone else knows? Speaking of quotes, there's a rule I heard from Nassim Taleb where he actually said, you should only quote people when.

Ryan Holiday (8:13)

You disagree with them.

Ryan Holiday (8:15)

The point is, make your own arguments on your own merits. But I think this is a really important part of the Stoic practice. If you think about what Meditations was for Marcus, right? It's not him arguing Stoicism to the public. It's him arguing the Stoics to himself. So he does use quotes from time to time, but he's not really having to think that much about attribution and he's not really trying to think about publication or the audience at all. He's just thinking about what does he need to hear, what does he know to be true and what needs to be said, what does he need to be reminded of? And I think it's important that we understand that Stoicism, the study of Stoicism is not a one way street. It's not just downloading the information from the originals, from me, from other people, but it's also putting your own spin on it. It's disagreeing with them, it's adding your own view. Stoicism should be better, different, added to as a result of you having studied and learned about it. That doesn't mean you're all going to publish bestselling books or articles or videos. It's all going to be well known. But make your own contributions, put your own spin on it.

Ryan Holiday (9:23)

Feel free to disagree, feel free to.

Ryan Holiday (9:25)

Argue, feel free to push back, feel free to add. I feel like one of my contributions to Stoicism was the connection between Stoicism and Nietzsche, the idea of Amorfati. I brought that in also with the help of Robert Green, but I brought that together. That's it. A practice of Stoicism that did not exist before, or an explicit connection that did not fully exist before in lives of the Stoics. I put all the Stoics, their biographies, in one place in the Daily Stoic itself. I combined the Stoics in a way that they'd never been combined before. And I made arguments that some people disagree with. I made statements that I think are true, but again, not everyone agrees with. But they didn't exist before. I put my own spin on it. I put my own stamp on it. Which is what you and everyone listening needs to do. Not just with words. In fact, with words least of all, most of all with our actions, with what we do, with who we are.

Ryan Holiday (10:29)

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30, 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. I just wanted to say thank you.

Toyota Trucks Customer (11:08)

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Toyota Trucks Voiceover (12:06)

Of tours, but you don't choose a Toyota truck to follow the beaten path. You choose it to find the places.

Toyota Trucks Customer (12:15)

In between.

Toyota Trucks Voiceover (12:18)

The detours, where each adventure pulls you toward the next. And wrong turns turn out right. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota trucks.