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The Daily Stoic
This Is An Important Time in Your Life | How Do You Do Hard Things When Life Is Already Hard?
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Listener
Foreign.
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Ryan Holiday
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. Help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more visit Dailystoic.com. Foreign. People probably thought Marcus Aurelius was strange. The time he spent alone in his room, the long walks he took by himself. We know they thought it was strange that he was seen reading and writing in the Coliseum, ignoring the carnage of the games below. The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, Anne Maro Lindbergh writes in A Gift from the Sea. They do not understand the need to be alone. Perhaps we ourselves don't understand it. We don't quite see the point. Or as much as we enjoy it, we don't see it as much of a priority. As I discussed over on the Daily dad podcast and email recently, parents will manage to make time for so many things, but quiet time for four, and by themselves is written off as an impossible indulgence. But actually, Lindbergh writes, these are among the most important times in one's life when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows that he must be alone to create, the writer to work out his thoughts, the musician to compose, the saint to pray. There would be no meditations without this quiet solitude, or, more alarming, there would have been no Marcus Aurelius either. He had to take the time to retreat into his own soul, as he said, to rejoice in perfect stillness. He needed to step away. He needed to evaluate and reflect, prepare and anticipate. He was an extremely busy man, with endless amounts of demands on his person and his schedule, but he insisted on stillness because he knew it was the key to his health and happiness, and his leadership depended on it. And the same is true for you. So on Monday I had a talk. I was flying to Florida for a talk, but I took the kids to school. I worked at the office and then I picked them up from school. We went to Whole Foods, did our weekly grocery shopping, as the boys and I do every week. And then I drove. We met at a parking lot near the airport. I handed my wife the kids and all the groceries. And then I flew to Florida, flew home. And then when I got back the next night, I made myself A sandwich from the groceries that I had just bought. And actually the week before, I took them to Whole Foods for a weekly thing and I had a phone call I had to do. They played upstairs on the playground. The Whole Foods headquarters here in Austin has second story playground. They played on that while I did my phone call. And then together we went and did all our grocery shopping. I love Whole Foods. I don't have to worry about what I'm feeding my kids. They love the, you know, the hot bar. That's what they love. They love getting macaroni. My son loves orange chicken. They love the sushi there. We love Whole Foods in our family. And you should make Whole Foods your destination for all things wellness, including high quality organic options to help you make better choices. Their 365 brand has delicious and wallet friendly varieties of ready to eat salad kits, plus ready to heat meals, rice and bean blends to pair with lean proteins. You can also save big on supplements and vitamins. This month. Check out their high quality multivitamins, probiotics and protein powders for all your New Year's resolutions and goals. Shop all things wellness at Whole Foods Market. So we had a unusual little first world problem in our family. We built a little house down on the Gulf Coast. Almost done. And now we're in the process of furnishing it. And we had to get mattresses for all the rooms. And so it was like, what mattresses do we want? And I was asking a friend, you know, what mattress do you have? Do you have a mattress you love? And they were like, I love Helix. And as it happens, that's who we grabbed a house full of mattresses from. And they are, coincidentally enough, today's sponsor. It's obvious why people love their Helix mattresses. They're not just comfortable, they're comfortable for a reason. You fill out this quiz that matches you with the perfect mattress based on your preferences and your sleep needs. We ended up getting the midnight mattress since it's got that medium firmness. It's not too firm, not too soft. And as it happens, it's their best selling model. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. It's been tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. They've got free shipping, seamless delivery. Like, honestly, the mattresses came sooner than we were thinking. We were doing this all. And then like, the mattresses arrived sooner than the beds, which was awesome. Helix delivers the mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US and you can rest easy with the happy with Helix guarantee that ensures seamless returns and exchanges. It's a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new Mattress and includes 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Go to helix sleep.com stoic for 27% off. That's helix.com stoic for 20. Just make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helix.com stoic. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I am back sitting in my chair at the office for the first time in some time. I was out with the family. We had a lovely break together and now I'm back in the swing of things. Back in December I did one of my last talks of the year. I was in Seattle for a live talk. Many of you came out. That was lovely. I loved seeing all of you and I loved answering your questions. The morning of that Seattle talk I did a cold plunge. It was lovely. Jumped into Lake Washington and then I went in the sauna and then back in the lake and then back in the sauna. Did a cold plunge on the first I was telling you. So I was thinking about that. It was a little colder in Lake Washington in Seattle in December than it was in the Gulf of Mexico on January 1st. But it's been a lovely new year. So I'm glad to be back in the swing of things. And I'm going to bring you a couple of my favorite questions here. Now, if you want to ask me a question, I would love to see you. I'm going to be in San Diego on the 5th of February, in Phoenix on the 27th of February. You can grab those tickets@daily stoiclive.com I hope you are having a lovely new year and we'll get right into it. What's your guidance for some of us in the room that are early on in our stoicism practice and journey and finding ways to stay consistent? Sure. Well, look, we're all early on in our stoic journey because it's something you're supposed to do your whole life, right? And there's a striking passage in Meditations where Marx Realist is kind of kicking himself. He's like, you're an old man and you're still doing these same things that you always did. You're still worried about this. You're stressed about that. Would I take that to mean is that we never arrive, we never graduate, we're always going to be learning. I think it's important that we understand the Stoics aren't something you have read. They should be something you are reading. It is an ongoing practice. So, you know, I've been reading and, as I said, rereading meditations for going on 20 years now, and I still get new stuff out of it. So I would just say keep exploring, keep reading. Find the different Stoics, read different translations, read interpretations of the translations, just keep going back to it, dip in and dip out of it. And then there's going to be times when you drift, when you've come away from it. Maybe it's not working for you, or you feel like you got it, and then life will conveniently remind you that you're not even close and you need to go back to basics. And that's kind of how I've understood the process. To me, it's reading, it's talking, it's journaling, it's applying, and it's all of those things in a loop repeated over and over and over again. And you get better and more advanced as you go on, but you still struggle with the same basic things because these are fundamental human issues that we experience over and over again. Considering tenets of courage and discipline, I would like to hear your thoughts on training in martial arts. I think it's great. I took my kids to Jiu Jitsu practice last week. I think this sort of warrior or martial tradition has a lot of overlap with Stoicism. I think that's why my books have been popular there. It's why the Stoics themselves would have, you know, trained in a lot of these things. I was actually. I was doing Jiu Jitsu pretty extensively when I was riding the obstacles away. So there's some little illusions and homages in there, so I can't speak to it too much because it's not like my main thing. But. But I think any. Any craft, any art, any domain that. That is challenging you physically, mentally, spiritually, you know, is. It is a place to apply these Stoic principles and in fact, also to learn things that you bring back to the Stoic principles. Quick question I have is probably a bit too deep, as all these other questions are, when you chose these different career arcs and paths. Right. You know, I'd pretend like you'd know it all, but you probably didn't. So what made you choose to not pursue being a CMO versus writing a Stoic book, et cetera, for those of us, you know, thinking about the greater good versus our own personal dreams, how did you balance that? Yeah, I would fully admit that I Had no idea where all this was going. The story, the direction, the clarity. That's only something that gets retconned afterwards, right? The connection between them becomes clear afterwards. I didn't know, and I didn't know any of it would work. I had this idea to write a book about stoic philosophy, which my publisher thankfully indulged me in, but they didn't think it would work. And clearly I didn't think it would work like this or I would have asked for a lot more money. Right? I was just, like, happy that they said yes, because I had no idea. So all of this stuff becomes clearer later. I remember I was at a marketing conference when I was the director of marketing and American Apparel. I remember I would go to this marketing event every year in New York City. And I went the first year, and I looked around and I was the youngest person there, and I was the only one not in a suit. And I went the next year, same thing. And then the third year I went and I thought, you know, if I keep coming to this thing, I'm going to be in a suit. And I just knew that that wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. And so sometimes just knowing what you don't want to do, the direction you don't want to go in, is really, really important. And so I, you know, I kind of made a hard right turn, and I knew I wanted to be a writer at some level. I knew I loved books. I didn't know what my first book would be or how it would work, but that was the first, you know, sort of decision that I made. And then with the success of that, I had a little bit more freedom to decide what I wanted to write about. And I took another kind of, you know, hard turn. And so I, you know, I do trust my. My gut a little bit, but I. I just try to think, you know, is this what I want to spend the rest of my life doing? And if the answer is no, let's try to get out of it as soon as possible.
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Listener
My question is we keep on doing challenging things, interesting things, reading, consuming more information, doing one thing after another. When do you really take a pause and step back to see or retrospect, basically to see what we are learning from it or what can we do better. How do you do that? I basically struggle with retrospecting, so I would like to learn from.
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Ryan Holiday
Yeah, this is really important. It can't just all be inputs all the time. You have to step back. You have to have time and space. For reflection. There's a passage in Meditations where Marcus is like, you can, dude, you gotta throw your books away and stop. You know, you stop this. And I think people who love learning can sort of know exactly what he's talking about there. I like to, you know, sort of. Although I do try to read and, you know, learn always. I try to go, hey, that. It's more of like, it ebbs and flows or there's seasons. And so, you know, sometimes I'm in a really research heavy phase. I'm trying to explore something or I'm doing a deep dive, like I really want to understand something. And then other times I go, you know, this is just a. This is more of a, you know, like when you put all the dishes in the sink and you go, I'm just going to let it settle. I'm going to let it soak. Right? Then I'm going to come back. Sometimes it's a soaking phase.
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Listener
I always have, like these big ambitious projects in my head and I can completely think about how it's going to turn out. And then, you know, you get a lot of dopamine. I'm going to do it.
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Ryan Holiday
I'm going to do.
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Listener
I'm going to do it.
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Ryan Holiday
Yeah.
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Listener
And then at some point you are just. You are so full of dopamine. And then you actually have to do it.
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Ryan Holiday
Yeah.
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Listener
And, yeah. You start procrastinating. I'm just curious if you have, like multiple just. Yeah. Strategies to do it.
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Ryan Holiday
Well, yeah.
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Listener
Things you can say to yourself.
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Ryan Holiday
Yeah, thank you. I don't think there's any sort of magical solution other than just. Just doing it. Right. And some. Sometimes it's the. It's the thinking and the planning and the talking and the telling everyone about it. It's like you're getting all of the validation before you've started. And so oftentimes when I have a project or something, I'm like, I'm just going to start this thing. I'm not going to tell anyone about it. I'm not going to make it a whole big thing. I'm just going to start, like, what is the smallest thing I can do to get started? So that's kind of how I think about it, is I try not to talk about projects while I'm working on them. I don't want people to tell me how excited they are for me or how great it's going to be or any of that, because I feel like it's like I'm. I'm getting in advance on the thing that, actually, I. I really want to just go earn. So I just try to. I just try to get after it and try not to overthink it. I'm gonna go Bill and Ted's excellent adventure on you. The. The phone booth is on the stage. Marcus Aurelius pops out. You've got, like, five minutes to pick his brain. Maybe go a little deeper on something. What do. What are you going to chat with Marcus about? Well, as I said, the. The biggest. The big question is, like, what happened with Commodus, right? Who puts a teenager in charge of the Roman Empire? That seems insane. So I'd obviously be very fascinated with that. I guess maybe here's a little nerdier one. Seneca's writings don't appear anywhere in Marcus Aurelius writings. So is that on purpose? You know, is he mad at Seneca? Is this as a deliberate snub? So I'd love to know what he thinks about that. I would have, obviously, millions and millions of questions, but those would be two.
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Listener
So my question is, how do you do hard things when hard things are happening to you? You know, you mentioned, you know, like, wars and famine. Unfortunately, we live in war. There's, like, wars happening right now and famine, and people have family who are, like, actively losing parents or partners, and it feels surreal. So I'm just wondering, how do you get yourself to do hard things knowing that?
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Ryan Holiday
Sure. Look, if you live in a war zone, you don't need to do a cold plunge, okay? Obviously, the idea is we do the hard things because in the future, life has hard things in store for us. And ideally, like, we want to be prepared for that. Epictetus was saying, like, the whole point of the philosophy is to get to a point where any of the things that happen to us in life, you're able to go, this is what I trained for. So the idea is, like, how do you put yourself when things are good, when things are easy? Speaking of wars, he says, just as an army undergoes a hard winter's training, because in the ancient world, Roman armies couldn't fight in the winter, so they would train in the winter to fight in what they would call the fighting season, which is the warm months. And so when things are good or when you are not experiencing adversity or difficulty or whatever it is, how are you training and preparing yourself so that when those things happen, you're able to deal with them? That, to me, is what it's about. 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 million people have downloaded the these episodes in the couple of 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.
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Listener
You.