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- [00:00]
Ryan Holiday
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- [00:57]
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- [01:14]
Ryan Holiday
Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom into the real world.
- [01:28]
Hey, it's Ryan.
- [01:29]
Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I told you this that back in February I had to fly to Hawaii to do a little chat with a lady named Oprah that hasn't come out yet. But another honor happened to me on that trip, which is that I did a virtual talk to the team at the Irwin Army Community Hospital in Fort Riley, Kansas. It was a group that included more than 150 healthcare staff members, both military and civilian providers who all serve at that hospital. And before I hopped on the talk, I heard a bunch of them were listeners of the Daily Sto podcast, which was really cool. So on today's episode I wanted to bring you some of their questions. Some of these are men and women in uniform serving in a difficult, stressful, complicated moment in our history. Appreciate them having me on. I appreciate that stoicism is something they are relying on and it was an honor to get to talk to them.
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By the way, if you want to
- [02:24]
see me, come talk. If you want to ask me some questions, I'm going to be in Portland. I think in two weeks. I'm going to be in San Francisco, Boston, dc, Chicago, bunch of cities. I'm going to Australia in the fall. You can grab all Those tickets@dailystoiclive.com Most of the shows are almost sold out, so you got to grab those. I'll sign your books, you can ask me questions, all that kind of stuff.
- [02:42]
Dailystoiclive.com so how do you apply stoic
- [02:47]
Interviewer
principles when the obstacle isn't abstract, but emotional and human?
- [02:52]
Ryan Holiday
That's a really interesting way to think about it. So it's like, if you're deciding to take it personally, that can be good in the sense that you're like, this is designed just for me, and this is a test that's going to make me better. And I love this challenge. This might be. There's this expression popular in socism called amor fati, which means a love of fate, where you don't just, like, sort of bear the circumstances, but you're, like, excited about them. So if you're taking things personally that way, like, go for it, that's awesome. But if you're taking it personally, like, I'm being singled out, this is singularly unfair. This is, you know, they're out to get me. No one has to deal with as many things that as I have to deal with, you know, now what you're doing is you're taking an objective thing and you're making it subjective in a way that's only making it harder. And I do think it's worth, you know, pointing out, like, okay, first and foremost, like, the world is indifferent to us, right? Like, the pandemic doesn't care about you, the hurricane doesn't care about you, the snowstorm doesn't care about you. Whether you're in an economic bull market or bear market, these things, they are abstractions and they don't care about you at all. And they don't know you exist. And so if you take them personally or you sort of ascribe a personality to them, that's going to make it harder to deal with. And then I think something that you bring up that is also a timeless fact of civilization, which would be bureaucracy, that's also not singling you out. It's not deliberate. It could be different. It would be better if it was different, but it's not right. And it's sort of. This isn't to say that we just tacitly accept and resign ourselves to bureaucratic injustices and we don't try to fix them or improve the system. But, yeah, if you let that wear you down, you're not only going to have trouble with the individual instance that you're dealing with, but you're going to burn out and not be able to be of use to yourself, your family, and sort of future patients or people in need. So I think just understanding that this is a fact of life, this has always been there. This is an imperfect solution to an impossible problem. And that, you know, our job is to find the little pockets of change or improvement or humanity inside that system is really important. There's actually an interesting passage in Meditations. For a long time, I didn't quite understand what. What he meant. This is Meditations, book seven, okay, book 765. He says, take care that you don't treat inhumanity as it treats human beings. And I think what he is saying, and this is something that comes as a constant theme throughout Meditations because he is dealing with an enormous Roman Empire. He's dealing with a fundamentally dehumanizing, colonial, sort of brutal power that it was in the ancient world. I think he's saying to himself, don't become like this thing that you're a part of or that you're fighting against, right? Like, don't. Don't. Just because the system is inhuman, just because the system is slow, just because the. The system is depersonalized, doesn't mean that you have to be that way. And. And I think this is kind of the primary struggle of our time. Like, we live in a depersonalized, dehumanizing, you could even say outright cruel and dysfunctional moment in American history and maybe even in world history. And I think our struggle is to not accept that and become that. So, like, when the Stoics are saying, don't be affected by it, right? When they're saying, remain unaffected, I don't think they mean, okay, you see the suffering out there and you go, that's just a part of life. That's not my problem. That's not what they mean when they say, don't be affected by it. What they're saying is, don't be affected, that is to say, changed by a world that largely does accept that, right? Like when you're in a slow moving bureaucratic system where. Where a lot of people are just doing their job or saying things like, that's not my job, it's very easy for that to become your attitude, right? And so when the Stoics are saying, don't be affected by it, that's what they mean. They mean, don't become that person, right? When Marx really says the best revenge is to not be like your enemy, right? In some ways, the best way to fight back against bureaucracy or reactionaryism or. Or any of these sort of trends that can be Happening at one time or another. The best revenge is, is to, is to not let that change who you are, to keep being hopeful and good and hardworking and compassionate and all the things that, you know, you value about yourself as a person. That's what we have to. To hang on to. And, and we have to outlast some of these temporary forces and outlast some of these temporary trends and last as long as we're able to last.
- [08:27]
Interviewer
What does doing the work, though, mean or look like maybe when people are already exhausted, burned out, or just even discouraged?
- [08:37]
Ryan Holiday
Well, I think there's a couple things there. So first and foremost, you make a good point. So the famous passage from Marx Realis where he's talking about the obstacle being the way. What obstacle is he referring to? He's actually referring to annoying people. He's saying that, like, people can get in our way, people can obstruct what we're attaching, attempting to do. But he says we always have the ability to change what we're trying to do, and that this annoying, obnoxious person presents an opportunity for us to practice different virtues. Patience, understanding, creativity, empathy, finding the good, all of that. This is a fact of life that goes back at least 2,000 years. And, and I think you also make a good point that he's not sort of superhuman. He's writing in meditations. The reason we have this book and the reason we're talking about these ideas is because they were not natural and second nature to him, but he really had to work at it. And so if we can see this as a muscle, I think that's also really, really important as far as actually putting it into practice. I think that's the other thing you raised there, which is great. This isn't something you are or you aren't. It requires willpower, it requires work. And the more you are taking care of yourself, the easier that's going to be. Like if we're saying, hey, obnoxious people are a chance to practice patience, well, you're going to have more patience if you got a good night's sleep, if you've been eating well, if you've been. If you have a workout practice, that can be kind of a steam, a release valve for you. The more you are taking care of yourself, the easier it is to bring some of these virtues to bear on this situation. Or even something simpler if we take it as a virtue. You want to get up early, you want to get after the day, which is something the stoics talk a lot about. I Think it behooves you not to stay up until 2 in the morning scrolling on your phone or it's easier to be cheerful and to see the good in a situation if you're not shaking off a hangover, Right? And so how you take care of yourself physically and mentally is really, really important. And then having these practices, whether it's a journaling practice where we sort of can work off some of that frustration or sort of fight to be our better selves, if we have a friend group or a support group where we're working through things, if we're, you know, taking advantage of therapy, if we're not over packing and over scheduling our day to the point where we never have two seconds to sit down and just be reflective. Like all this stuff is really, really important. And so I think it, I think we can't just expect ourselves in the same way that an athlete doesn't, you know, treat their body like a garbage can and then expect elite performance. It's about structuring your day, your life, your habits around facilitating being what you're, what you want to be in those high stakes, you know, or tempting or frustrating situations.
- [11:52]
Maybe you've been hearing the buzz about live shopping lately. I know I have.
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And it makes sense.
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Like, people are already on their phones, they're hanging out, they're looking for stuff to do. So why wouldn't business want to meet people where they're at? If you're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk into your store, I know a little bit about that. You're setting yourself up for disappointment. On whatnot, you can go live and sell directly to in real time. They see what you've got, they ask questions and they buy and they keep coming back. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses on whatnot. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day on the app. And they're not just browsing, they're bidding and buying and coming back so you can go live, show off your projects, and turn that into real income. People selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. And that's because you're not just listing products. You're building real connections with buyers. For a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. You just got to visit whatnot.com sell to start selling. W-H-A-T-N-O-T.com sell whatnot.com sell so how do
- [13:01]
Interviewer
you recommend distinguishing between what we can't control, what we can influence, and then where our energy is best spent?
- [13:11]
Ryan Holiday
Yeah, I think the stoics are pretty black and white, right? There's some stuff that's up to us and there's some stuff that's not up to us. The serenity prayer, the things you can change, the things you can't change, and the courage and the wisdom to know the difference. But I think in real life it is a bit more complicated. There is that gray area of stuff that is kind of up to you, but not fully. I'll give you an example, just a lower stakes one than your world. But you could say, I control my book, I control my writing, I control all of that, but I don't control whether the audience likes it or I don't control how many copies it sells. I only control making it. I don't control how it does in the market. And that's true. But then sort of in the middle there, there's what we might call marketing, right? There is, there is this stuff we have influence over and the decision to not try to influence it in a way is ceding control and taking away something that maybe you could have made some kind of positive contribution to. Now, I don't want to be flip and go like, look, there's some stuff that's up to you and some stuff that's not up to you. You don't control whether the patient gets better or not. Right? Because we're talking about a life or death situation and we have to think about these. Did you try everything that you could? Did you do everything that you could? Obviously that matters. At the same time, if we overstate what is in our control or not, if we get a bit of a God complex, then what happens is when results come in that are fundamentally not a reflection of us, but just a reflection of the reality of life. You know, if you have a, you give someone a medication that has a 20% chance of treating this condition or not, well, 80% of the time, then it's not going to give you the result you want. And if you take that personally, that's going to, that's not only going to harm your ability to bounce back and help with treatment number two and treatment number three and treatment number four, but it's also going to make it harder for you to show up fully with a clean slate on the next patient as well. And so part of this, like, hey, what part is up to Me, and what part is not up to me is about seeing life as an infinite series of. Of games. As they say, like in game theory, there's finite games and infinite games going like, hey, it's interaction after interaction after interaction. If I'm overstating my sense of control, I'm going to give myself credit when it's not up to me. And I'm also going to credit myself with failures and setbacks that are not up to me, that make it harder for me to sort of start again. And so part of, I think, stoicism is this idea of, like, focusing on the process, focusing on what's up to you, and then being willing to not see what comes back as a reflection of you as a person, but just as a reflection of, hey, you're not God, and you don't get to decide how this goes.
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Interviewer
So how can leaders help their teams recognize meaningful progress even when the obstacle isn't fully resolved?
- [16:53]
Ryan Holiday
Yeah, that's a great point. Looking for those little wins. I'm just a big believer in momentum. I think momentum is. Is. Is kind of everything in life. And so I'm always trying to break big things down into smaller pieces so I can feel like I'm moving towards them. One of the lines from Zeno, he's the. He's the founder of stoicism. He says, you know, well, being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing. And so, you know, whether it's a patient, whether it's your own career, whether it's, you know, a project around your house or even, you know, a book you're writing, I like to think about, how am I making progress, as opposed to, have I checked off the box? One of the writing rules that I love, because a book can be such a big, overwhelming and demoralizing process, it's just write a couple crappy pages a day. And the idea is, if you are showing up every day and putting something down, eventually you'll get to a first draft. And first drafts are universally bad. But you can turn a bad first draft into a pretty good second draft and a better third draft and fourth draft, and eventually you'll have something publishable. But you can't improve something that doesn't exist. And so sometimes our perfectionism. Actually, Churchill said this. Churchill said that a better way to spell perfectionism is paralysis. And so if you need it to be perfect, if you need this sort of singular, conclusive solution to a problem, you're often going to end up doing nothing. But if you're. If you're focused more on chipping away at it. If you're just helping one person, if you're solving one problem well then you actually are moving forward. It just might not, it might not be measurable day to day. Like I think about this, I talk about this in the wisdom book. Like one of the interesting things about wisdom is that you never actually get it. I say it's kind of like the horizon, right? You're walking towards the horizon and it's just always getting a little bit further away. But if you walk towards the horizon for a long time and then you turn around you'll look back and see how far you've come And I think that's how we want to think about these problems is like hey am I moving forward? Am I creating momentum? Am I crossing things off? That's really what's up to me. Am I solving the whole thing all at once? That's probably not what your individual job is.