The Stoic Advice Every Man Learns Too Late In Life | Ryan Holiday PT 2

Summary

Podcast Summary: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: The Stoic Advice Every Man Learns Too Late In Life | Ryan Holiday PT 2

Date: August 16, 2023
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Guest: Ryan Holiday

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Episode Overview

This episode features bestselling author and modern Stoicism advocate Ryan Holiday, joined by Impact Theory host Tom Bilyeu. The conversation focuses on timeless Stoic philosophy and its relevance for building a well-lived life today, especially for young men facing a world shaped by social media, rapid idea transmission, fragile values, audience capture, and the breakdown of shared narratives.

Key themes include how to define and live your values, balancing ambition with self-knowledge, navigating comparison and the temptation of modern egotism (with direct contrast between Andrew Tate’s persona and Stoic exemplars like Marcus Aurelius), handling addictions and trauma, and why discipline remains the cornerstone of self-respect and fulfillment.

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Main Discussion Points

1. Parenting, Empathy, and the Interpersonal Application of Stoicism

Timestamps: 02:06–07:10

• Tom shares a story about a chaotic child on a flight, whose parents are disengaged, and how the child finds comfort with a stranger rather than family.
• Ryan discusses how parenting has made him more empathetic, not only towards his children but for all people; many disruptive behaviors are manifestations of unmet needs or struggles, not malicious intent.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 04:35):
    "Your kid's not giving you a hard time, your kid is having a hard time. But this is true for all people in the world."
• This empathy leads Ryan to approach everyday frustrations (like being cut off in traffic) with patience and perspective; most issues are transient and not worth compromising one’s peace or values over.

2. Defining Values, Standards, and the Line Between Assertiveness and Pettiness

Timestamps: 07:10–10:07

• Tom and Ryan debate how to distinguish between letting small things go (out of empathy or Stoic detachment) and when to assert one’s standards.
• Ryan draws parallels between receiving editing feedback as a writer and life’s judgment calls: learn to accept input and adjust when appropriate, but also retain conviction about core principles or key work.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 09:30):
    "Knowing what's important and what isn't, I mean, that's the hardest thing to do in life. Being the person who is principled and strict about what matters and what's right and wrong is important—but also so is compromise and collaboration."

3. Social Media, Rapid Idea Transmission, and Cultural Fragmentation

Timestamps: 10:07–15:49

• Tom raises concerns about how fast-moving ideas online devolve from wisdom into memes, cliches, or even parodies (“everything becomes cringe”).
• Ryan observes that meanings are quickly diluted (e.g., "gaslighting" comes to mean everything and thus nothing), making it hard to keep one’s bearings, especially for young men in an era of algorithmic influence.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 11:34):
    "If you don't know what port you are sailing towards, no wind is favorable."
• Both agree: without clear values, people drift—defaulting to what’s popular or lucrative rather than what’s meaningful.

4. Chasing External Markers vs. True North Star

Timestamps: 15:49–17:26

• Tom confesses to unhealthy comparison despite having material success ("I can still fuck myself up with a single YouTube search of the coolest houses in America").
• Ryan notes the futility of making money for its own sake—there will always be someone with more.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 16:54):
    "You can't fix internal feelings or inadequacies or doubts or insecurities with external accomplishments or accumulations—just will not happen."
• Tom concludes: "There is a better path, but no one's going to end up on it by accident."

5. Addiction, Trauma, and the Unique Derangements of Modern Culture

Timestamps: 17:26–23:12

• Tom questions Gabor Mate’s argument that all addiction stems from trauma, suggesting culture itself can drive addictive behavior (e.g., doomscrolling, porn, OnlyFans).
• Ryan agrees both trauma and evolutionary/biological urges play roles: evolution equipped us to desire more, but not to feel “enough,” which historically wasn’t an issue because most people died long before they could ever sate all desires.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 21:16):
    "Within Alexander the Great, there's the, hey, this is why one is compelled to become a conqueror. But then also, he's got daddy and mommy issues... It creates a potent cocktail that creates an extraordinary person, but also probably a person that you would not actually want to trade places with."
• The challenge is to harness ambition without becoming enslaved by it ("art monster" phenomenon).

6. Barometers for a Well-Lived Life: Stoicism vs. Modern Celebrity Models

Timestamps: 23:12–34:13

• Tom contrasts the "Andrew Tate" high-ego, materialistic path (Bugattis, virality, transactional relationships) with Marcus Aurelius' inward-looking, self-mastery focus.
• Ryan breaks down why comparing yourself to such figures is toxic—true power and virtue are often invisible, and "audience capture" (serving the algorithm or public demand) leads to becoming a parody of oneself.
• Both stress that one’s "metric" or barometer must be explicit and values-based (impact, honesty, positive contribution), not merely external markers like money or fame.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 32:38):
    "Am I being a good steward of Stoicism?... There are videos I could make that I know would do better than the videos I am making. I don't make those videos because I don't think it's appropriate. It's not what I want to do."

7. Audience Capture, Algorithmic Slavery, and Staying True to Mission

Timestamps: 34:13–41:33

• Discussion of the perils of chasing the algorithm—noticing that negative, doom-filled content often performs best, but leaves creators feeling out of alignment.
• Ryan’s practice: Create what genuinely excites and feels true, then present it effectively, but avoid making feedback or virality the North Star.
• Iron Maiden analogy: "You can only plow one field at a time, so it doesn't matter what the neighboring farmer is doing on theirs."
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 37:00):
    "Otherwise I don't have the audience—the audience has me. Do I make YouTube videos, or does YouTube make me make videos?"

8. Handling Comparison & the ‘Greatness’ Trap

Timestamps: 41:33–51:01

• Tom and Ryan trade frameworks for avoiding despair in the face of comparison (“Solieri complex”).
• Ryan: True success is not out-competing Elon Musk or Joe Rogan, but maximizing your unique potential and circumstances.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 44:13):
    "I was dealt a hand... What is in my control is, did I get the most out of that hand that it was possible to get out of that hand?"
• Tom: The only metric worth judging yourself by is “Did I show up and sincerely pursue the thing?”—not the outcome, which is often luck or beyond your control.

9. The Purpose of Parenting & Social Contribution

Timestamps: 51:32–58:01

• Tom asks why Ryan chose to have kids if legacy is ultimately futile in a cosmic sense.
• Ryan: Parenting isn’t about legacy but about the opportunity to give and be better, to contribute to the next generation and pull the circles of care wider (Stoic philosopher Hierocles’ "concentric circles").
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 55:43):
    "You owe something to those people, to that future... To leave it better than you found it."
• Both agree there are many ways to "expand your circle"—not all involve biological children.

10. Political Polarization, Democracy, and the Problem of Shared Values

Timestamps: 58:01–66:51

• Tom and Ryan discuss the breakdown of shared narratives and the resulting political gridlock.
• Ryan notes gridlock is a feature—not a bug—of democracy, designed to force compromise. However, erosion of democratic norms is a concern.
• Insights into why Socrates distrusted democracy and the slow, hard-won expansion of civil rights over centuries.

11. Crisis of Shared Narratives, Religion, and Hyperfragmentation

Timestamps: 66:51–73:42

• Both express concerns about the loss of “shared texts” or narratives, which historically anchored society; with religion’s decline, nothing has fully replaced it, leaving people (especially young men) vulnerable to shallow, viral ideologies.
• Tom frames Andrew Tate as a symptom of headline-ification and meme-ification of nuanced truths, contrasted with the deep, self-critical tradition of Marcus Aurelius.

12. Discipline, Destiny, and Building Self-Mastery

Timestamps: 79:36–85:53

• The value of discipline is not just in achievement but in the dignity and presence it brings to every moment and task.
  • Quote (Ryan Holiday, 82:58):
    "A job doesn't bring dignity to a person. A person brings dignity to the job. How you do anything is how you do everything."
• Tom and Ryan agree: Discipline can be cultivated through repeated small actions, not giant heroic leaps; starting with manageable habits (e.g., "sober January") helps re-establish agency and belief in yourself.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Empathy and Parenting:
  • Ryan Holiday (05:01): "The practice of looking for something to understand or pity even in other people is a practice I've taken out of being a parent."
• On Setting Metrics:
  • Tom Bilyeu (29:36): "When you're trying to do something grand with your life, you must call your shot and say, I'm trying to do this thing. And this is the metric by which I will judge whether or not I have done that thing."
• On Discipline:
  • Ryan Holiday (84:11): "Virtue is not any different than being a builder. You become a builder by building things...you become disciplined by making disciplined decisions. Little ones which lead to big ones which add up in a big way."
• On Life's Meaning:
  • Ryan Holiday (76:08): "That battle between truth and what you want to hear, what's easy and what's hard, you know, the higher self and the lower self—this is the battle of the human experience. And philosophy is there to guide you towards the good life."

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Essential Takeaways

• Define Your Values: Without a clearly chosen North Star, you’ll drift aimlessly, swayed by culture, social media, and comparison.
• Guard Against Audience Capture: Stay true to your mission—don’t let algorithms or public opinion dictate your core message or values.
• Comparison is a Trap: Measure your success by how fully you use your unique gifts and opportunities, not by external rankings or others’ metrics.
• Discipline is Transformative: Self-mastery is both the means and the end—a daily practice that brings dignity and fulfillment to life, regardless of outcomes.
• Parenting and Legacy: True legacy is not remembrance, but impacting the lives of those you nurture—family, community, or future generations.
• Embrace Nuance: Resist the urge to headline complex issues or follow simple, viral solutions—ancient wisdom and philosophy offer tools for navigating the messy realities of life.
• Societal Contribution: Do what you are uniquely equipped for and what truly excites you; collective progress comes from diverse individuals following their callings.

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Notable Timestamps

• [04:35]—Ryan on universal empathy from parenting
• [09:30]—Balancing feedback and conviction as a writer
• [16:54]—On the impossibility of fixing insecurities with external achievements
• [32:38]—Being a good steward of Stoicism and ethics in content creation
• [37:00]—Avoiding algorithmic slavery: "Do I make the videos, or does YouTube make me make videos?"
• [44:13]—Success as realizing your own potential, not out-competing others
• [55:43]—On what we owe the next generation: "To leave it better than you found it."
• [82:58]—Discipline’s true value: dignity and presence in all you do

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Conclusion

Ryan Holiday and Tom Bilyeu deliver a nuanced, inspiring exploration of Stoicism, self-mastery, and fulfillment in a world that increasingly rewards shallow, performative, and ego-driven achievement. Their insight calls for intentional living: choose your values, serve others, resist easy metrics and headline-ification, and focus on what is timeless and true.

For more Ryan Holiday:

• Daily Stoic – Free daily emails and podcast
• Daily Dad – Parenting guidance through a Stoic lens

For more Impact Theory:

• Subscribe for ad-free episodes and in-depth conversations that challenge contemporary culture and help you thrive.

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Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

welcome back for part two with Ryan Holiday, bestselling author and modernizer of the incredibly useful Stoic philosophy. My mission in life is to help people play the game of life well. It really is a game that you can win. But winning isn't about money, fast cars or accolades. It is about earning your own respect and living a life of meaning. To that end, there are few things more powerful than the ideas that Ryan has popularized and that we discuss here in part two. From integrating your emotions without becoming weak to avoiding a fragile ego and the blind conformity that stop so many people from reaching their full potential. And a whole bunch of other things, including the surprising impact of social media trauma and how to avoid becoming a parody of yourself. For more episodes just like this, be sure to subscribe to our ad free feed on Apple Podcasts. You'll get access to hundreds of archived episodes and bonuses not available anywhere else. Now, without further ado, I'm Tom Bilyeu and I bring you Ryan Holiday. You yourself, though, have said a lot of people are. A lot of people have kids, but not a lot of people are parents.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'll tell you a story, a flight child story. So. And this is an international flight. I am on my way to England. I am in coach, bro. This is not current me. This is past me. And I am going to see Lisa, who lives in England. England at the time. And this little kid, I'm waiting in line to check my bags and there's this family with this child, kids, probably, I don't know, four or five. And he's losing his mind. Yeah, losing his mind. Throwing himself on the luggage, knocking it over, shrieking, wailing. And they. They don't even say anything to him. And I was like whoever has to sit next to that kid. Oh my God, I feel terrible. Okay, this, uh huh. So get on the plane, you know, whatever, an hour and a half later, and I'm, I'm watching them come on the plane and they're like coming towards. I'm like, oh, God, oh God, oh God. Ends up sitting next to me now. These motherfuckers. Ryan Holiday. It goes, there's, these are the four rows, right? So goes dad, mom, child, me. I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Like it should go parent, child, parent me. But they put him next to me.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And he is losing his mind. Yeah, like losing his mind. Like, what, did somebody poke him with a, like a poker, Like a hot poker. Like he's, he's just really going bananas. I, I just can't fathom. And they don't say a word. Not to him, not to me. And then partway through the flight, I don't know, we were probably up in the air 30 minutes with him shrieking and I'm like, in, in. At the time I would have said like my Dallas pose. I was just like, it's all good. I'm going to be totally chill. The little kid, nothing you can do. I can't go anywhere. There's nowhere else for me to sit. And he puts his head on my lap, holds my hand and goes to sleep. Doesn't say a word. Not, hi, I'm Timmy, nothing. And I'm just like, the parents don't say anything and they let this child fall asleep on a stranger.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And in that moment I was like, now, bro, this is partly the parents are like, the fact that they didn't put him in between them.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, that's an odd choice.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And that he felt comfortable with me. He leaned on me. He didn't lean on them. And so I was like, whoa. Like, this kid does not feel comfortable with them for whatever reason and does with a total stranger. And then he ends up being an angel through the whole flight. Man, it was surreal.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, you realize with kids that 90% of it is hungry or tired, right? Like, it's one of those two things. And so one of the things I've taken out of being a parent is just so much more empathy for other people, period. Right? Like, it's like, I know my kid is fundamentally decent and good. So when they're not being good, right? The expression is like, your kid's not giving you a hard time, your kid is having a hard time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's nice.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right? But this is also true for all people in the world, right? Like, you know, your kid is acting this way because you skipped nap or they got woken up in the middle of the night or whatever. But maybe that's why the person in front of you in line is being rude, right? And so the practice of looking for a reason or looking for something to understand or pity even in other people is a practice I've taken out of being a parent. It's helped me in the world, right, to just understand people are going through stuff, kids especially are going through stuff, and then it's hard to be them. And so, yeah, to take from your story, like, man, what, what must it be like to be a kid who's not comfortable around their parents? That's awful. And that's not their fault. That's not something that they can do anything about. And so how can I, I can't change that. I have no legal recourse or it's not appropriate for me to intervene in that situation. But I can let that open me up, make me better, more understanding, more patient, more understanding of both this individual and then also all individuals. And so I think being a parent has changed me in that way. It's made me more empathetic, more patient, more understanding, more present, you know, in the sense that I don't extrapolate everything out or go, if I just let this person cut me off in traffic, well then am I the kind of person that just the world walks all over and does what? You know, it's like, none of this matters. This is an individual instance which is forgettable in the bigger picture of things. And so I'm going to treat it as such, or I'm going to go, this person is going through something, this person is struggling, this person is not winning. They may be cutting me off here, but I have a way I'm getting a way better end of this deal and that I get to be me and they have to be them. And that has helped me just as a human being in the world.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Where do you draw the line though? How do you know that that isn't just cope and you're not really being a doormat? Like, do you have a line?

[Ryan Holiday]

I. Yeah, I mean, I think there is some line, but it's almost always never the thing that you are getting triggered by or upset by. Do you know what I mean? Like, are you ever going to meet this person again? Is anyone watching? You know how that fragile are your values? You know that, like letting this thing go?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't know that people's values are fragile. I don't think they define them. I don't think people know what their values are. Like when are you being petty and when are you having a standard?

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, look, I think about this as a writer, right? Like you get your notes back and my first reaction is always like, who the fuck are you? You know, or how dare you? You know, because I'm good at what I do. I've slaved over this and you're going to return it to me covered in red ink. And then I sit with it and I think about it. And with time I come to accept that actually the vast majority of the notes have merit. Some of them are incorrect in substance, but they're in the ballpark of something being wrong. And I'll take the fact that this was flagged and I'll come up with my own solution to it. And then there's the other percentage of those notes which I have to have the confidence and the sense of self or the sense of what I'm trying to accomplish to go, you think I should cut this chapter. But actually this is the most important chapter of the book. And without it, none of this other stuff works. Or without doesn't mean to me what I want the project to mean. And so I'm going to be comfortable. Just reject. So you accept some of the things and you reject other things. And knowing what's important and what isn't, I mean, that's the hardest thing to do in life. Being the person who is principled and strict about what matters and what's right and wrong is important, but also so is compromise and collaboration. Right. And I think most successful, talented people probably are already over indexed for control and like wanting things to be a certain way and having a strong opinion about that, you're almost always needing to correct in the other direction.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, this is, this is where a lot of this stuff gets really complicated. And I think people struggle is they don't take the time to even mark out what their value system is. Yeah, when you, when you don't have a target, you're going to miss it every time. And so this is why phase one of mindset, trying to make your life better is always going to be defining that stuff, like actually writing down what are your beliefs, what are your values so that you have something to aim at. And you know, when I think about where we started this conversation and where I want all of this to go, there, there is a milieu that people are in now in the modern world where we don't really know what to aim at. Things get very distorted on social media. The way that information. In fact, here's, here's a concept I'm trying to get my head around. Maybe you can help me. There's something about the rapidity with which ideas transmit now that I think has a deranging effect where something will start as a good idea and it rapidly becomes like a cliche and then it becomes like postmodern. Oh God, what do they call it? Deconstruction, you know, of all of it. And so then like everything becomes cringe and you know what I mean? Like there, there suddenly isn't a sincerity to wanting to be better or be

[Ryan Holiday]

good or there's some term of value like, or of worth, like gaslighting. And now everything is gaslighting, right? It gets used and used and repeated and its meaning stretches, its definition stretches to the point where it has no definition, it has no meaning. And so yeah, I agree it's difficult. Everything has a label, everything has a term, everything actually means this or then someone saying it means the opposite of this. And it's very difficult to get and keep your bearings. And so when I was trying to be empathetic to like what it's like to be a young man today, that's one of the things I go like. It's disorienting, it's confusing. And one of Seneca's great lines is, if you don't know what port you are sailing towards, no wind is favorable. And I think his other line is, he says, you're on this path. And he says tranquility and peace and greatness is the sense of that path. And he says, not being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours, he says, even from people who are hopelessly lost. So if you don't know what your values are, if you don't know what you stand for, if you don't know what you're trying to get, and then you're just scrolling on your phone and the algorithm is just serving you up. What's most engaging, what's most provocative, what other people are looking at. It's really easy to go down rabbit holes to get red pilled or whatever that is. And you don't want that to happen. It's disorienting. It can take you very far afield from where you want to get. Where. I think another great example is if you don't know what you're working towards and why you're doing it, you don't know where you're trying to end up as a human Being you just default towards what makes the most money, what other people respect the most, what everyone else is doing, what's popular right now. And that's probably not a good long term prescription for either success or happiness.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why not?

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, first off, if everyone's doing it, the chances of there being long term viability in it is probably low. Right. And most of the things that you do in life solely optimizing for the financial return are probably not the right things. And it's probably not actually sufficient motivation or purpose. I talk to people and they're like, I want to write a book. I go, oh, that's awesome. Well, why? Well, it'll be good for my speaking business. Or oh, I want to be famous.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Or oh, people actually say that?

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. Even if they don't say it, it's when you ask when you start to look at what they're evaluating that success as, it's not. I wrote something that matters. I did my best. I made something that had real impact. They're just thinking, how many copies did it sell? How big was my advance? Was my advance bigger than some other person that I heard got in advance? And those are not Great North Stars, Right? A great North Star is. This is what I was put here to do as a human being. No one has done this thing before. This needs to exist. This will help people. Right. And if all you're doing what you're doing for is money, the chances of you ever getting enough are very low. And the chances of you meeting someone who makes you feel very small for what you have is very high. You could work your whole life, be incredibly successful at what you do, and meet someone who made in one day what you have made in your entire life. You could meet someone who inherited more money than you will ever have. And then are you going to let. If, if the money was why you did it and what constitutes success, then all of that was just taken from you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. It's crazy, man. So I live in a ridiculous house that I earned and I can still fuck myself up with a single YouTube search of like the coolest houses in America. And you're like, oh, those houses are cool, man. Mine's like, whatever. It is so ridiculous. It is so self evident to me that it's ridiculous. But nonetheless, I'm like, wow, there really is like some bizarre lizard part of my brain that cannot help but compare myself to others.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And whenever that comparison comes up, empty, like takes conscious effort to reorient myself. But it's in those moments that I realize if I did not have a North Star that I can write down and be like, this is what I'm trying to do. This is what I choose to judge myself against. I would be in despair.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And I'm very grateful that I learned quite early that money didn't change my insecurities.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And that you can't fix extra.

[Ryan Holiday]

You can't fix internal feelings or inadequacies or doubts or insecurities with external accomplishments or accumulations just will not happen.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And it is very hard to recognize that without going through it yourself, which is the sort of hilarious thing about life. But once you learn that, then you can start putting yourself on a better path. But my punchline is there is a better path, but no one's going to end up on it by accident.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You know Gabor Mate, Right. All right, so I want to go back to the idea of addictions and how people end up getting trapped. Because if I can get trapped that easily, in comparing my house to other people, I know how easily other people are going to be getting trapped.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Gabor Mate talks about addictions in life. They are covering up a trauma. Just period, end of story.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't know that I agree with that. I think that there might be something deranging in culture. And look, I think life has always been hard. So I don't. I'm not saying this is a uniquely difficult time. I just think it's difficult in a unique way, if that makes sense.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so no matter. In fact, I would rather be born now than any other time in human history by a country mile, despite AI and all of the insecurities and everything that we're going through now. But having said that, I do think that there are these sort of weird deranging things that lead to things like death of despair, drug addiction and onlyfans porn, social media, doom scrolling. My question is, what is that thing like, do you subscribe to Gabor Mate? This is trauma and you're just trying to mask it. Or is there something else going? And to really complicate this question, do you know about ibogaine?

[Ryan Holiday]

No.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so we'll get to that in a minute. But so what. What do you think leads people to these modern addictions?

[Ryan Holiday]

Both explanations are probably simultaneously true, which is that everyone has some kind of hole or trauma that they're trying to address and fill. And then we also have biological urges, an evolutionary desire to accumulate, to experience, to do that. It makes sense that evolution would turn on. And evolution never really had to worry about how and why to turn them off. Right. Like, evolution would create in an Alexander the great desire to conquer. Right. Because this would have all sorts of benefits to one's evolutionary success. But would it have a reason to ever make him feel enough, right. To go, this is sufficient? I have gone far enough? No, not really. Because for probably most of evolutionary history, you died before you ever got to that point.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Also, that guy that has that push like you're just going to keep going. I not a conqueror, obviously, but in business, I have that same sense of it's just. And I don't think this is bad, but it's never enough. And you, I've heard you quote, I forget what language it. What language it is. I think it might be Haitian, where it's like, beyond the mountain is only more mountains.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, Well, I think that's true in life, in. In not just about, like, opportunities. It's also just there's always difficulties, right? I think to me, that's what that proverb means. But I think even within Alexander the Great, there's the, hey, this is why one is compelled to become a conqueror. But then also, he's got daddy and mommy issues. His dad is king, his mom is ambitious, his dad neglects him. His mom smothers him with affection. It creates a potent cocktail that creates an extraordinary person, but also probably a person that you would not actually want to trade places with. And so the work of my life has been, look, I have this set of skills, I have these interests, I have these ambitions. At the same time, how can I try to be as good as I am capable of being without being a slave to those things? How can I be a normal person inside of those things? And by normal, I mean sort of what we were talking about earlier. Can you be good and great at the same time? Right. Have you heard the term an art monster?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, from you.

[Ryan Holiday]

But, yes, it's easy to be an art monster in the sense that you turn off all the other things and you only leave the drive, the ambition, the talent on. And I think that's not just an unbalanced way to be. I don't think when you look at the lives of those people, you're like, it's fun to be them. There's a Roman general named Marius who is like the conqueror of conquerors. He was Rome's leading politician. And Seneca says about him, he says, you know, Marius commanded armies, but ambition commanded Marius. And his point was that at the end of the day, this guy's not actually in charge. The demon is in Charge or the drive is in charge. And I think self sufficiency, operating under your own power, that's a better place to come from. I think it actually creates better work. I think it creates less harmful consequences to the, the outside world. Right. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, like Europe is littered with the bones of the victims of those men. Right. Like their inability to, to just deal with the fact that dad was never proud of them. Sacrifices hundreds of thousands of people in these pointless wars. Right. It's not a consequence, less decision to be insatiable as much as you think it is, it hurts other people.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What's the barometer? So if we're trying to craft a North Star, if I'm a young guy and I'm trying, I'm, I'm listening to this debate. I've got Andrew Tate on one shoulder. I've got Marcus Aurelius on the other shoulder. What's the barometer like? Andrew Tate has Bugattis and women and is having sex with whoever he wants theoretically as multiple kids all over the place and women that are willing to stay with him even though he's unfaithful and he's a high value guy and makes tons of money and the at one point the most searched person on planet Earth.

[Ryan Holiday]

But you know why he's the most searched person on planet Earth? You know why his stuff blew up online? Right. It's not because it's good. His stuff blew up because he started a pyramid scheme that incentivized young kids, mostly like young boys, to upload hundreds of his clips to the Internet. So he makes viral content that is provocative and challenging and sometimes speaks to hard truths that people do need to hear a lot of. It also confirms biases and prejudices and sort of plays to our lowest common denominator, kid narcissism. Yeah. Which is attractive.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you think narcissism is attractive or just reads his confidence?

[Ryan Holiday]

And that's, I think it reads as confidence, but it's also, there's, there's a. We like bad boys. We like people who say effed up things that, you know, we wouldn't say. We, we like mischievousness, we like anti heroes. Right. So he makes content that people want, but then he took hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars of other people's moneys. Other people's money and then in exchange tricked them into propagating his content. Right. And so like I think one of the tricky things about narcissists and egotists is that it's not an accurate picture of reality. You know, I'm sure you have. I've met some extremely wealthy, extremely successful, extremely powerful people. I don't see them driving Bugattis. I don't see them bragging about how many people they're sleeping with. I don't see them anywhere, actually. Right. Like most of the power, the truly powerful people in the world want to keep as low profile as possible. Right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

To your boy Elon Musk, homeboy is like, out there.

[Ryan Holiday]

I. I would argue that something broke in that guy's brain and that I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to trade places with that guy for all the money in the world.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You would get all the money in the world if you tried to place with them. So it's true. I don't want to lose sight of the barometer of what's the barometer. So if it isn't money and women.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Then it's.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, it's. Are you making. I think, I think a couple things. I sort of evaluate my life or measure my life built around a couple things. One, am I realizing my potential? Like what? The unique DNA, circumstances, experience, talents I have.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So get as good as you can possibly get.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes. What is the thing you were put here to do? And can you extend that out as far as it can reasonably go? Right. Am I making a positive impact on the world? If everyone was doing what I was doing, would that work? You know what I mean? Am I part of the problem or am I part of the solution? That's kind of one of the metrics that I look at.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But even that makes a huge leap around this barometer. So making the world a better place. So just to keep challenging this idea, I don't know if he actually believes it or again, if he's playing a character, but Tate is going to tell you that he has made the lives of countless people better.

[Ryan Holiday]

Sure. But if, in. If it balances out with the fact that you keep women locked in a house and, you know, take a percentage of their sex work, earning sex, you know, sex worker earnings, you know, see,

[Tom Bilyeu]

that's where I think we can get really specific. So the. The thing that makes Tate all an illusion for me and why I just do not encourage people to listen or to follow that path, is that the. The thing that he monetizes is vice laden in and of itself. And so when you think about, okay, like, is onlyfans gonna be the thing that you wanna help people get better at, knowing that the people that are using it are in the darkest place possible in their life and so if I step back and look at that, that's where I go. Okay. My internal barometer is. Take, for instance, what we did at Quest. It was like I was showing up every day for my mom and my sister. They had been morbidly obese my entire life. I wanted to make food that they could choose by based on taste, and it happened to be good for them. And I made sacrifices that cost me a lot of money to make sure that if they ate those products, that they really were going to be moving in a better direction. And that was hugely important to me, and it became the way that I really looked at things. Same thing at impact theory. Right. I've always said, look, I'll slide to neutral because I want everything that we put out to be empowering. But I would slide to just entertainment if that meant I could avoid going out of business. But I would never go to the point where I felt like if somebody takes the advice, and this is just how I think about it, if you take the advice of one of our mentor characters, it should make your real life better.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And if. If that is anything other than neutral.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, you're not going to see me do stories about somebody where if you were to emulate their behavior, your life is going to be trash. So at some point, like, you have to have a thing that is like, okay, this is my barometer of whether I'm doing the thing that I want to do. In fact, here's how I explain it in business, what boys and girls at home, hear me when I say that you have to. When you're trying to do something grand with your life, you must call your shot and say, I'm trying to do this thing.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And this is the metric by which I will judge whether or not I have done that thing. You need to say it ahead of time so that you don't fool yourself and start bullshitting yourself about whether you're doing that thing or not. Because it's very easy if you're failing and you didn't lay out a metric, like, am I really failing because I didn't have a metric? You know? So for me, it's like, impact theory is here so that if you take our advice, the advice of our mentor characters on the entertainment side or in these interviews, that it will actually improve your life as determined by that formula that I laid out for fulfillment.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. I think this is another part of it. It's not just in my part of the problem or the solution, but, like, am I acting with honesty, good ethics, Decency. How am I doing what I'm doing? Another problematic character. But I was at American Apparel for a long time, and I remember someone was proposing to Dove that he could move the factory overseas and make more money or something. And he said, if all I cared about was making money, I would have become a drug dealer. And I remember thinking about that, because it's true. You chose what you chose because you cared about something other than just making money, Right? Or you would have chosen the kind of things that make the most money, right? Like, for me to choose to be an author. I've already made a decision that, like, making lots of money is not my number one priority. And then to write about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, I've now doubled down on this choice, right? I'm not saying I can't be successful at what I do. I have been successful at it. But there are. I made a bunch of choices already that put a large financial ceiling on what I'm doing in a way that I'm totally good with, because to break through that ceiling would require me to do things that I'm not comfortable with, that I don't think are right. So I have, like, a little note card on my desk. What's unusual about what I do is I write about this ancient philosophy that I did not create, that I. I don't have any ownership of, and that I don't see myself as adding anything new to, but as. As explaining and popularizing and making accessible. That's what I feel like I'm good at doing, Right? I'm not.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I tried to read Marcus Aurelius and I couldn't. But I've read your books, and they're super helpful.

[Ryan Holiday]

That's what that. What you just described as me succeeding at what I set out to do. So that means a lot to me, more than selling lots of copies or getting a large advance. That's what I had an experience with, Marcus Aurelius Meditations that touched me personally. And I thought, I want to give people that experience that they couldn't get by me just saying, read this book, right? And so I have a note card on my desk, and it says, am I being a good steward of stoicism?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes.

[Ryan Holiday]

So the videos that I make, there's videos I could make that I know would do better than the videos I am making. I don't make those videos because I don't think it's appropriate. It's not what I want to do. It's not what gets me excited. I could have people on my podcast, or I could write my books in a certain way, or I could sell things or price things at different ways that would allow me to make more money, but would not be being a good steward of this thing that I wouldn't say I was entrusted with because no one gave it to me, but that it has fallen in my lap. And so I think about this with like, who makes the products that I make? Where? What, where is the factory, right? How much am I charging? What am I, what is the pitch, right? Like, am I, am I hitting triggers that manipulate people into doing what I want, or am I just persuading them to do something that's good, Right? Like there's all these ethical questions about how one does what they do, not simply what they do and how much they're trying to do, but how you do what you do. And I think that's a really important part of the barometer because you could do things that make you more successful, that make you more well known, but you're eroding your sense of self in the process. You're eroding your ability to look in the mirror and go, I'm proud of who I am and what I do. And I think that's a short term trade off with real long term consequences.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Let's look at it in terms of the. Building a YouTube channel is a great example since we've both done that. So before we started rolling, we were talking about audience capture and how quickly you can become a servant to the algorithm.

[Ryan Holiday]

Or a parody of yourself.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Or a parody of yourself. Wow, really well said. I have frustrated my team three times now as I've moved from phase one of mindset to phase two and now into phase three, because it really does, like, the algorithm gets confused. Who are you making content for? And in any one time, the headline and thumbnail that we might have created. Especially as we moved into phase three, it became very easy as I became truly obsessed. Like I'm not faking in any way, shape or form. I think we are going through the most disruptive time since World War II. And I think most people are going to get caught off guard and they are going to get left behind and there is going to be a tremendous wealth transfer as the New World Order takes place. And whether that a rising China, whether that's a move to Bitcoin, whether it's AI taking over, whatever, all of these things together, I, I am, I see myself in the following way. I cobbled together a bunch of ideas that ended up being Daoism meets Stoicism, basically, and through business was like, oh, this is how you take control of your life. And in doing that, I realized, oh, when I the. So I taught a business course for a while in Impact Theory University called Business Decision Making. The reason that I taught that course, even though it's the worst title of all time, is because what people think they need is the $100 million copywriting course. But the reality is, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to be able to solve novel problems.

[Ryan Holiday]

That's it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It like that. That's life, man. So what. What is Impact Theory? The show. What is Impact Theory, the video game that we're working on? All of it. It is trying to teach people the set of ideas that will allow them to solve novel problems, not just problems that they've never encountered before, problems no one has encountered before, like AI.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So anyway, in. In building up my YouTube channel and moving into phase three, we were like, every title was negative and they were crushing.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And in any one, I was like, yeah, that actually is my feeling on that. I'm worried about this, that or the other. And then as I step back and looked at my channel, I was like, oh, it's. It's like really making me uncomfortable that it's just getting so negative.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And so you get into the if it bleeds, it leads thing. So how does one avoid falling prey to that? How do you not become a parody? How do you not become audience captured? How do you not become a servant to the algorithm?

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. Every once in a while, I'll write something, I'll send it to the email list and someone will be like, why did you say this? You must have known this was going to piss people off. Or, why did you have to get political? Or why did you have to touch this third rail or whatever. And sometimes I reply if I'm feeling cheeky about it. I go, I didn't build this audience to not say what I think. I built the audience by saying what I think, what I think needs to be said. And that's what I have to keep doing. Otherwise I don't have the audience. The audience has me. Do I make YouTube videos, or does YouTube make me make videos? You know, like, I make what I'm interested in, what lights me up, what excites me. Obviously, I then think about, what is the way to have that reach the most people? What is the way that will not be forgotten or missed? Like, you do have to understand marketing and promotion and public relations and just presentation. Like an author that goes, don't judge a book by a cover, by its cover. That's an author who doesn't sell very many books because, like, the COVID is there to be judged, Right? That's what its job is. And the thumbnail and the title and, you know, the description, these are. These are rules of a medium or of a platform. You don't have to be a slave to them, but you do have to understand them. And so I kind of. I try to start with what lights me up with what's exciting to me, what I think needs to be said, and then I try to translate it in the medium that it is. I do. You know, sometimes I'll find myself, I was being emotional, I was reacting to something in the news. I was being petulant or judgmental about something. And when I go back and do the edits or read it for the podcast, I go, this is probably more incendiary than it needs to be, right? And so I can adjust that so I'm not needlessly alienating people that I want to reach. But then once I have confidently done that, I also have a wall around me that makes it so I am insulated to a degree from the feedback. I'm not reading the comments, the emails are not going to my inbox. I'm not constantly refreshing to see how many retweets or likes or comments something got, because that's going to mess with my barometer, with my compass. Those people don't know what I'm trying to do. Those people aren't consuming the whole of my work. They're just getting this one snapshot of a thing. And what ultimately matters is my sense, the path that I'm on. Not all these people crisscrossing me or not. What other people are doing. That's the other mistake. It's not even feedback that you've gotten. It's. You're doing this, and then you look over here and you see someone else is doing it differently. And then you go, should I not be doing this? Should I be doing that? And one of the things, I'm a big heavy metal fan, a quote that I heard very early in my career, that's sort of formative for me, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, which is this unique band that makes kind of weird music that's never been super popular, never been sort of of the moment, but somehow is, they've sold 100 million records. They tour all over the world. They're almost 50 years into this as a band, totally sort of independent, own their shit. He said, he said, we have our field. And he said, you can only plow one field at a time, so it doesn't matter what the neighboring farmer is doing on theirs. And so if you go, yeah, it doesn't matter that other people are doing it this way or these people are doing it this way. How do I think it should be done? What's working for me? What are best practices? And then I leave everyone else to what they're doing. I can't look at what some other author, even if they're a friend of mine, even if I really respect their work, I can't go. But Mark Manson sold this many copies the first week. I mean, we write totally different things in a totally different style. We put out things at different times. The idea that I would judge myself against him is not fair to me or to him. And so you gotta be able to go, this is what I was trying to do. This is the long term race that I'm running. And I tune out everything else.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How do you frame that? And I'll give you some context of what I'm trying to get to. I want to be the greatest that ever lived at whatever I approached. And I have the receipts to back up that I'm very, very, very good at what I do. Yeah, but I'm not the best at anything. And so before me is the temptation to think less of myself because I'm not Elon Musk or because I'm not Joe Rogan. There's always somebody who isn't a little ahead of me. They're way ahead of me, Me. And so I realized that I'm, you know, in the grand scheme of things so far, my career, while impressive from somebody that hasn't achieved what I've achieved, it's going to be forgotten. And so that requires me to do framing of my pursuits. So now I think I have the bulletproof way around it. But I'm very curious to know what you do.

[Ryan Holiday]

I mean, first off, it's all gonna be forgotten. Everyone is going to be forgotten. And if you aren't, it doesn't do you any good. Right. Mark Sirios in Meditations, he goes, remember, you won't be around to enjoy your posthumous fame. And he says, it's also worth pointing out that people in the future will be the same idiots that are alive now. Right. Like different idiots, but the same. Right. And so the idea that you have to create this monument of greatness to impress people in the future, to last the long, to have the most, is a false race so what I think about is, I don't go, hey, does Elon Musk have more money than me? Has insert author, sold more books than me, is so and so married to a more beautiful person than me, does so and so have a nicer house than me? I think I was dealt a hand. I was born to certain parents at a certain moment in time with certain unique DNA, with unique interests. I've had unique experiences. I was drawn to a unique lane. And the vast majority of that stuff was not in my control. What is in my control is did I get the most out of that hand that it was possible to get out of that hand. Right. Elon Musk was born to a dad who owned an emerald mine. Were you born to a dad that had an emerald mind? Were you born with his natural genius at science or math? A whole bunch of things. So it's insane that you would be comparing yourself to this person not just because you started at different places, you didn't start at the same finish line, you didn't start at the same starting line, but you're also aiming at different finish lines. And so what I think about what I think the race is, it's to realize your potential. It's to make the most out of what you have. So I think success is. Or you think about your tombstone, it's like he did everything he could with what he had, you know, and you have, you know what I mean? Like, are you going to compare yourself against someone who has a bigger podcast but didn't start a multi billion dollar nutrition company? You know, like that's a, that's, that. But that's insane.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's true.

[Ryan Holiday]

That's insane. Right? You're comparing all of what you're, you're comparing part of what you've done to someone who's only done X. Right? And that's, that's not what you were optimizing for. That's not the race you were running.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's interesting. I don't get. My wife reminds me of that all the time. And I don't get any alleviation of my drive from that. So here's how I look at it.

[Ryan Holiday]

It.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so I, I make a moral judgment that if you're going to do something, you ought to strive to be the, you ought to strive to be the greatest of all time, knowing that you almost certainly are incapable of becoming that. So to avoid that from being a torture chamber, you have to separate out the willingness to, to play at that level from the outcome. So one, even if you Become the greatest of all time. It will be a miserable experience. Case in point, look at Michael Jordan. Who? I don't know him, I cannot say for sure, but I'm pretty sure he's an alcoholic. Like, just looking at the jaundice of his eyes and stuff like that, like something.

[Ryan Holiday]

I don't know about that, but I think he would stipulate that he got a great gift and a great burden in that greatness. It's been hard to be him. It's not all been sunshine and roses and victory parades. He has a thing that makes him great that he also cannot turn off.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes. And what I think happens to people like that is they let their, their ability to love themselves, to like themselves, be tied up in the outcome. And so the one thing that I told myself, I learned very early on, the success can't be guaranteed, but the struggle can. And so if I reward myself for playing all out, leaving it all out on the field, trying to make the most of my hand, playing this as well as humanly possible, 100xing my talents, knowing that I different limitations, that I think of it from a biological standpoint. So I look at Elon Musk, the emerald mind, whatever. Like, he's just brilliant at understanding first principles, thinking, engineering, et cetera, et cetera. I, I don't like to put limits on myself, but I've never found that engineering comes easily to me. Mathematics is very much like a black box that I don't understand. So what I, what I judge myself by is, did I show up and sincerely pursue the thing? Not did I get the outcome that I wanted? Not did I become the greatest of all time? And this is part of why I don't let myself think about legacy. People ask me, what legacy do you want to leave? I'm like, I don't think about legacy. I think about living right now. I think about optimizing for fulfillment right now. I think about doing something that positively impacts the lives of other people partly because of how that makes me feel and just, just it feels awesome. I think about my marriage right now. I don't think about like. And this is part of why I don't have heartburn over not having kids. I don't think about like, what that will be like beyond me. I don't need my DNA to go into the future. I, I won't lie that I don't think most people should follow me in that path. I think it is a way higher risk path to walk. I think having kids is better for a whole host of Reasons. But, but because I don't think about legacy because it's not part of how I value myself. It hasn't been the troubling decision that I think it would be for. Especially people that can't have kids.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, did you leave anything? Did you hold yourself back in some way? Did you not do something that you could have did because you were afraid, because you didn't think you were adequate, because you didn't want to learn something? To me, those are, those are things that are in your control. Right. Whether you were born in the right moment, whether it was appreciated when you did it. Those are all things that are not in your control. And so what are you going to focus on? I think that's the ultimate question and I try to focus it on that. I think what's interesting is it's inherently subjective. Who is greatest of all time anyway? Michael Jordan doesn't have the most rings, he doesn't have the most wins. You know, he, he has some records, but he doesn't have all the records. He doesn't have the most points. Right. There's a whole bunch of facts. So, so you're already saying it's some intangible, ineffable, subjective thing. So the idea that you would compare yourself against other people or that it's somehow a ranking, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's, it's a dead end. It's just a dead end. I mean, like again, we're talking about money. If you go by whether you have the most money in the world, well, that's not a known fact. Right. This is like, what are you relying on? You're relying on the Forbes list or something which other people are lobbying. This is the anecdotes about rich people upset that they're at 7 instead of 5, or the financial shenanigans that they show Forbes to try to get higher on the list. Like this is a very well known thing, just like my version of that is. The bestseller list is not at all representative or a remotely accurate depiction of who is selling the best.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Basically the Bible in Harry Potter.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. And it's not even a reflection of who is selling the best over a long period of time. It's who's a reflection right now, which is irrelevant the second it happens. And so deciding what metrics you use to measure whether you're succeeding at what you do is a really critical decision. And then the ability to, once you have made that Decision to tune out the things that are not part of that decision to be kind to yourself in that regard, to not go well. I know I said this is important, but I'm insecure because so and so has more. You know, that's a recipe for misery.

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Ryan Holiday]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Ryan Holiday]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Why'd you have kids if the point isn't to be remembered? If you know you can't enjoy your posthumous fame or the posthumous love of your children, why make such a sacrifice?

[Ryan Holiday]

I don't necessarily see it as a sacrifice. What in in the sense that like what it's cost me isn't that meaningful to me? Like I still get to do all the things that I like to do and I also get this wonderful experience that's opened me up in so many ways, that's challenged me to get better in so many ways, that's forced me to be responsible both to and for something. I just haven't experienced any part of it. And this could change. I mean, my kids are young, but I haven't experienced any part of it that hasn't been a net positive. And the things that I lost were things that were not actually that important or I wasn't really doing anyway. So to me the meaningful thing about having kids is the opportunity it presents for you to give what you didn't get to be better than the people or the generation that came before you. To try to make someone. A good, decent, contributing member of society is a profoundly meaningful and difficult and heart wrenching thing. But it's just been incredibly rewarding and beneficial in all these ways.

[Tom Bilyeu]

When you think about stoic life or putting together a philosophy that's going to allow because ultimately all of these philosophies are about the self, society becomes downstream of the self, which I think is really important, is a big thing I want to get across to people. Where does kids fall in that? Is that an intentional thing that you think most or everybody should do? Like how do you craft that, that well made life?

[Ryan Holiday]

There was this stoic named Hieracles who said, you know, every person is born self interested, born selfish, you care about yourself, you care about surviving, you care about advancing. And then he said, that's like sort of the first circle, the first ring. And then there's the ring of your family members, your offspring. There's the people who live near you, the people who look like you, there's your country, there's the continent you're on, there's these sort of concentric circles that get bigger and bigger. And he said, the work of philosophy of life, it's about pulling these outer rings inward, right? About caring about and contributing to more and more as you go. And I found that to be really meaningful and purposeful, that, yeah, you have this inherent selfishness, this biological urge towards self preservation and self advancement. And you could build your life around that. I guess I don't think that works out super well. I don't think that gets you where you want to go. The decision to have kids or to be a. There's many ways to sort of have a family, right? They don't have to be your biological children, they don't have to be children at all. Right. But the decision to go like, these are my kin, and then to also expand the definition, to expand the circle outwards to include more and more, to include animals, to include nature, to include unborn generations, that is the work of stoicism. And that's where this key virtue of justice comes in. You owe something to those people, to that future. That's kind of how I think about it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What do we owe them

[Ryan Holiday]

to leave it better than you found it. You know, have you heard that Greek expression, society is great when men plant trees in shade, they will never know. You know, did you kick the can down the road or did you plant a tree that would make things better for the future? I kind of think about it like that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How do you navigate when people don't agree on what a better future looks like? So you've got somebody like Elon Musk who wants to go to Mars, and they think interplanetary species, absolute must. Then you have other people that are like, how the can you justify thinking about going to Mars when we have issues to solve here on planet Earth? We got people starving to death and you're spending billions of dollars trying to get us to another planet. What the hell?

[Ryan Holiday]

I think one thing we have figured out, this is why we live in a free market capitalist system. It's the worst, best system, is that you need a portfolio theory. You need a lot of people working on what lights them up, on what they think the solution is, and that collective distributed process or collaboration is the way that we have breakthroughs, the way that we solve problems. The top down singular person knows what's best for everyone. The central planning authority has solved it, has not worked well historically. Right. And so if that's what he thinks he should be doing, that's what he should be doing. You know, and if you think, you know, raising money to distribute malaria nets in Africa is the best way to alleviate human suffering and you have a talent or affinity for doing that, that's what you should be doing. And I know what I feel like I should be doing and I hope everyone can figure out what they think they should be doing. And that's what we need everyone to be doing. The only way you can screw up is by doing the opposite of what you deep down know what you should be doing or you don't do anything you feel like you don't have a person, you know you do.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's a great quote along those lines. I forget who said this, but ask not what the world needs. Ask instead what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is more people who've come alive.

[Ryan Holiday]

That's right.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I thank my students a lot in Impact Theory University with that line, like, you know, I'm just so grateful that they come there to invest in themselves, that they're trying to find that thing that, that, that lights up their day and that they spread that. Now, what do you think about the divide in the country where we're getting this sense of like. No, no, no. The way I think is right, the way you think is wrong. And there's like this real sense of othering.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's probably always been there. I think it, that's why we have a political system that makes it very hard to get an overwhelming majority. Right. And what that's supposed to force is compromise. Right. It's supposed to form, it's supposed to create the need for coalitions and compromising. And it's supposed to create a system that doesn't stagger to the left when you have a Democratic president and staggered the opposite direction to the right when you have a Republican one. But that for all the changes, it actually stays pretty stable. And I think the founding Fathers were very, very genius. Like gridlock is a feature and not a bug of the American system. And I think you saw during COVID the flaws of the American system. But then over a long enough timeline, we did pretty good. Sure, it was easier for China to do certain things, but then it made it harder for them to do other things. And I've come to understand that that's how the American system works. And that there's basically been no moments accepting a few very grave crises where it ever really worked in the sense that it's easy to pass laws, easy to make changes, easy to reimagine and change things. It's not supposed to be that way. Now there are, I think, some very real problems and we are facing a real erosion of democratic norms. I mean that not in the political party sense, but in the sort of fundamentally how the system's supposed to work and what some of the unwritten rules are and what good faith in that system is. Even when one has disagreements that I'm worried about and alarmed by for sure. But I also have some faith that over a long enough timeline it corrects.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why did Socrates hate democracy?

[Ryan Holiday]

Socrates lives in the time of 30 tyrants, right? Basically Athens is at war with Sparta. Sparta ultimately wins this war. It's a topsy turvy time. It didn't have the evidence that we have now of not just the flaws of the other system, but the sort of long term durability and viability of the democratic system, that it is the best, worst system. You know, there is something fundamentally crazy about democracy that says, hey everyone, brilliant people and idiots deserve an equal say in how things go. Right? That's crazy. I'm writing about Harry Truman right now in the book that I'm working on now. And really Harry Truman was basically a regular ass dude from small town America that ended up the President of the United States. And it was a remarkable test of the system. Also a remarkable test of virtue. This is a guy who has.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How is he the remarkable test? How did he become president?

[Ryan Holiday]

I mean, he basically was county judge, then he ran for Senate, he's kicked upstairs. He basically is anointed to the Senate by a corrupt political boss who was tired of dealing with Truman's honesty at the local level. He thought, if I can get this guy out of Missouri, he will cause less problems for me than if he is here. So Truman gets sort of kicked upstairs to the Senate. He has couple sort of moderately unremarkable moments, and then he's picked as FDR's running mate. He never went to college, had no formal training in anything. He's a veteran in World War I and he's still paying off his debts from a failed business. When he's elected to the US Senate, which he felt honor bound to continue to pay. He never takes a bribe, never is engaged in any sort of the corruption of the times and cheat on his wife. He's just an honest dude. FDR probably picked him because he thought he wasn't a threat. And then FDR suddenly died. And now this guy is not only the President of the United States, he is the sole possessor of atomic weapons at the most pivotal moment in US history. That's insane. The fact that Marcus Aurelius is the emperor and what I just described to you about Harry Truman is not that much more or less insane than let's just pick the firstborn son of the current leader to be. You know what I mean? Like, it's insane. It's insane. And yet it seems to work less bad than the other ways of doing it. But I just think it's important when we look at the ancients and we look at their political theories, like these were people who'd not yet come to the conclusion that we didn't come to here in America until the 1860s, that it's wrong to own another human being. Or that women are equal to men, which took like another hundred years. Right. Or that, that people should be able to say what they think without fear of consequence, or that people should be able to do what they want to do with their life. Like that you shouldn't have to do what your dad did. That you should be able to move where you want and live how you want and love how you want. It's important that we realize, although the philosophers sometimes hinted at these were like hard won, hard fought innovations, we didn't become a true multiracial democracy in this country. And I know we're not technically a democracy, but we didn't become anything close to a one person, one vote. You're free to do and live and be how you want until the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And if you were a gay person much later than that, we're talking like, like within the last 10 years, could you legally marry the person that you want to marry? Or within the last 20 or 30 years have access to certain kinds of birth control or move and live how you want? Like, these are the. This is an ongoing process. It is a procession of torch passing and breakthroughs and changes that is shockingly new and continues. And it's not necessarily a straight line. I mean, we stagger backwards and fall, you know, And I think if we see it that way, it also becomes imperative for us to be engaged and involved.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I was just going to ask. That's sort of the culminating thing. So part of the takeaway that I have with Socrates and why he hated democracy was they voted to kill him. So that's. Obviously you're. You're gonna have certain beef with a system that can do that, where it can create a little bit of mob rule, especially if it's a true one to one democracy versus, like a representative democracy, like what we have. So as far as I can tell, his beef was like, wait, if you're gonna vote on something, you need to be educated on that. So if I'm right and culture is downstream of the individual, what. But going back to sort of, what is that ideal life? What do we educate ourselves on? Is education sort of a moral obligation? How do we make sure that that's done well?

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, in the teaching of philosophy and the propagation of myths and stories and morals was the one thing that they got pretty well in the ancient world, you know, and that tradition, that great conversation, I do feel, has atrophied. We don't study the greats, we don't know these myths. When you would watch Shakespeare, you would understand he was borrowing from Plutarch. And when you would listen to Lincoln, you would know that he's alluding to and making references to lines and ideas from Shakespeare and from the Bible. There was a common set of texts and ideas and shared assumptions. Now, was it predominantly sort of Western and Christian? Yes, and there were benefits to that in the sense that everyone was on the same page. But it was also insufficient and artificially constrained in that Eastern wisdom was either suppressed or unknown. Right. And the stories were overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly, you know, X, Y or Z. And it's. It's actually wonderful that it's expanded because we have more to choose from and more to learn. But if there isn't a shared sense, if there isn't a shared familiarity with a core set of ideas or principles, it does make it hard to have both the individual barometer and the collective social barometer.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, I think this is a big part of what we're going through now. This is a big part of why I asked. The starting question is, you know, in. In a lot of ways, what Tate represents is the hyper fragmentation, the breakdown of any sort of shared morals or sense of how things should be be. And when that all begins to break down, then you get this unmooredness of people not knowing what they should be aiming at. We not having a common sense of things, ought to be this way. And part of what I worry about in the modern world is that velocity of ideas that I was talking about. So when you get a breakdown of religion, which, again, I'm not religious, but I recognize the danger in not having shared narratives.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So you get a. A world where ideas travel with hypervelocity. They very quickly become sort of cynical takes on. And I don't. Maybe there's a name for what you're talking about earlier, but that sense of everything has a name, and by giving it a name and I can put it in a neat little box, I feel like I understand it, but in reality, I've given a headline to something that's actually truly nuanced. And by cramming nuance into a headline, there. There's a breakdown of something that I haven't quite wrapped my head around but that I really worry about. And as somebody who feels like my lot in life, the hand that I have been dealt is that of Solieri. Do you know the. Okay, so my poor listeners have heard me talk about this so many times. There's a movie called Amadeus, which is about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and he had a contemporary. This is a real guy. And Solieri, in the movie, anyway, he laments to God and the fact that you know Mozart but you don't know Solieri, that. That already sets you up, especially when I tell you that I'm the guy that, you know, wants to be the Michael Jordan. So Solieri laments to God, and he says, why have you made me just good enough to realize I'll never be as good as Mozart? Yeah, why couldn't you have made me bad at music so that I could be like everybody else and just love Mozart or be as good or better than Mozart? But to make me just good enough to realize I'll never be as good is like this deeply troubling, dissatisfying thing. And so when you get this idea of, okay, there's all this tremendous nuance in the world, we are all grappling with, trying to understand the nuance. But if you're like me, you're Solieri, and so you're just good enough to realize. I don't know if I can comprehend all of this nuance. And I'm cramming things into headlines. And in cramming things into headlines, it becomes easier to hold onto, but it becomes more difficult to navigate the real world, which is truly complicated. And so as I think about this, you know, phase three of how I am really trying to handcraft a life that is fulfilling. I mean, just to really put a fine point on it, you constantly butt up against reality. And we've talked about A lot of these things. So you're building a YouTube channel. You don't want to become a parody of yourself, but at the same time, you want to get as much reach as humanly possible. So how do you master the algorithm while still maintaining true to what you're trying to put out? And for people that don't know, you wrote a book called Trust Me, I'm Lying, which is actually how I came across you.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And it's about media manipulation. And so seeing you, I'm sure, you know, still be a thoughtful marketer, but yet abandon some of those less savory, you know, tactics from your youth.

[Ryan Holiday]

And so just because you can doesn't mean you should.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yes, very true. And so anyway, getting back to this, this idea of hyper fragmented, you've got the breakdown of religion hyper fragmentation, you have headline, the headline ification of nuanced, complex ideas that manifest as these caricatures of somebody like Tate. So when you compare Tate vs Marcus Aurelius, to me, me, it's cram everything into a headline that's easily digestible in a clip on social media versus a guy that writes meditations, which is him writing to himself about how to be a better person. And so in the final analysis, for me, it's like all day, every day, I want to go back to this ancient wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, to get back into the complexity of what real life is to get into from my frame of reference, to get into the messiness of biology, to understand that I have these subroutines, algorithms, I'll call them, running in my own brain, that really dictate what the outcome will be of the ways that I move in my life. And if I align them and look, there are ancient philosophies, whether it's Taoism or stoicism, those feel like they are somebody going, what are the things that make me feel calm and centered in myself, that I have been good, that I have contributed? And the reason I harp on the biology is the biology is the reason you want to do those things.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Because if it even, even if you look at, at a normal house cat, it will toy with a creature as it kills it and then maybe it eats it, maybe it just leaves it for dead. Like, can you imagine like going and doing that to like a 7 year old? Like, I'm just gonna break his arm and like, like drag him around for a while. And then like when I get bored or he's dead or whatever, like, dude, you'd be the biggest sociopath in the world. And so knowing that there are like, we're. We're there before the grace of God, go I. Right. So we're. We're like one minor step removed away from all that stuff. And so anyway, getting into the complexity of a life we'll live, knowing that you have these biological drives and understanding that we're living in a time that's pushing us towards an Andrew Tate, when in reality, we need to find a way to get back to these anchored things that are in alignment with this, the sort of long arc of life, being a good person, being in alignment with your biology.

[Ryan Holiday]

Well, what I would say to someone who's young and sort of trying to figure out their place in the world, someone who's sort of dissatisfied, disillusioned, feels like the past generation is filled with hypocrites. It feels like the system is breaking down, feels like certain truths aren't true anymore. And you want purpose and you want meaning and you want guidance and you're trying to figure out who you should be and who you should listen to. Like some flashy, random person on the Internet is probably not it. What you need to know is that the smartest people who have ever lived have been asking themselves those same questions. And that all the things that you're feeling about this moment in time are not as modern or as rooted in technology or shifts or the economy as you think they are. This is what human beings have been wrestling with since the advent of consciousness, right? Since we crawled out of the trees and the bushes or the water, whatever, and we're like. Like what? You know, we have been wrestling with these existential questions about who we are, what we do with this life we're given and what does it mean to die? What does it mean to suffer? And what does it mean that people suck and are awful and are evil?

[Tom Bilyeu]

That.

[Ryan Holiday]

That the good guys don't always win? You know, that it feels like we're in decline. This is that. That is what they were talking about in the Renaissance. That's what they were talking about in the American Civil War. That's what they were talking about, the founding of America. That's what they were talking about in the Dark Ages. That's what they were talking about in ancient Rome, in ancient Greece. As long as there have been humans, there have been people asking these questions. And the great philosophical texts, the great thinkers have so much to teach you, and you should. Should avail yourself. Seneca says, you know, only those who. Who make time for philosophy are truly alive, he says, and only they are truly wise. Because he says they annex into their own life all of the wisdom of the past. Right? Like you are struggling with these questions. You're not going to figure it out by yourself. And if you do, it'll take your whole life. You want to learn from the experiences and the struggles of others. And someone who's trying to get you into a pyramid scheme or telling you that it's going to be easy or that it's somebody else's fault, like, that also existed in the ancient world. They called them demagogues, right? There were tyrants in the ancient world. There were liars in the ancient world. There were sophists in the ancient world, which were a kind of philosopher who could make clever, persuasive, attractive arguments. But they would argue one thing to one group and then the next day argue a totally different thing to a different group. And that this battle between truth and what you want to hear, what's easy and what's hard, you know, the higher self and the lower self, this is the battle of the human experience. And that philosophy is there to guide you towards. Towards dealing with that and towards human flourishing or the good life, or any stoics would say, living in accordance with nature, like what you were meant to do, how you were meant to be. That's what philosophy is about. And that's what I try to popularize and make accessible in my work. But really what I'm doing is going check out what these people said. Don't ignore the noise that's happening around you right now. Ignore, you know, the attractive, flashy, controversial thing right now, and go to what's timeless and true and been, you know, wrestled with for centuries.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well said. Have you seen the TV show the Bear?

[Ryan Holiday]

Of course.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I'm not surprised you say, of course. That, to me, really represents stoicism, the sequence. I think if you're not with me yet, you will be when I. Are you coming up?

[Ryan Holiday]

I only watched the first season.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, my God. No wonder you're not convinced yet. All right, watch season two. I. Without giving away the episode, I'll. I'll abstract it. So I've often been asked, hey, Tom, I'm really struggling with my kid. Like, they're 15, 16. They're just not doing anything productive with their life. Like, what do I do? And I'm like, look, there's only one way that I can think of to get somebody who's truly adrift gift and get them back on track. You're gonna have to kidnap them. You're gonna have to take them to a desert island or whatever. Put them with a group of people whose respect they want to earn.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And then they will conform to the group. And if you can at part for people that don't know the Bear, the Bear is an amazing show about the best chef, Basically the best sort of young living chef. He is at a three star Michelin restaurant and his brother. This is all the setup to the story. So I'm not giving anything away. His brother passes away and leaves him his like sort of shitty local town restaurant.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. A family sandwich shop.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. In like a terrible neighborhood in Chicago. And so he decides to go back and run it. And he then brings with him the discipline of an ultra upscale fancy restaurant, which you see and you're like, whoa, this is like really militaristic and. But it starts dealing with discipline and, and all of that. And dude, season two is going to blow you away. If you like season one, you are going to love season two.

[Ryan Holiday]

What?

[Tom Bilyeu]

You wrote a book called Discipline is Destiny.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why?

[Ryan Holiday]

What you're talking about there is what I mean when I say discipline is destiny. It's not that discipline will make you great. It can, right. If you are disciplined and dedicated and you work hard and you have high standards, it radically increases your chances of being successful. But what true discipline does, true mastery, self command does, is it makes whatever you're doing great while you're doing it right. So there's a story about this successful general who gets too powerful in Athens. And so they punish him by the people that fear him, punish him by making him like head of the sewer system. And this is supposed to degrade and humiliate him. And he ends up taking to the job and he gives it everything he has and he cleans up the whole system and gets it operated, operating properly. And then it becomes this highly coveted position. Right. Because it's a culture of efficiency and effectiveness. And people see the effect that it has on the health of the city and all this stuff. And basically the lesson, the philosophical lesson was a job doesn't bring dignity to a person. A person brings dignity to the job. Job. Right. And so how you do anything is how you do everything. What discipline is, is not a secret or a shortcut to success, although it is those things. Discipline is the end unto itself. I work very hard every day on my books on getting better as a writer. I think that contributes to their success, but it's also great and meaningful and why I get out of bed every day independent of whether it leads to any outcome at all. Because I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But what matters is, did I show up today? And was the thing when I saved the draft and was done with it, was it the best it could be with the time that I had for it? That's, that's what discipline is to me, or discipline at its most meaningful and important. It's not, oh, I eat well and I work hard, you know, or whatever. That's part of it. But real discipline is that it's the command of oneself.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Can it be built?

[Ryan Holiday]

Of course. Certainly. We know it can. Atrophy can be lost. Right. So we see it happen. You can sense it in yourself. If you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I can't sense it in myself. Ryan, you take that back right now.

[Ryan Holiday]

You can see it in the before and after pictures of just about anyone that's ever done anything. So. Yeah, of course, of course. I think. Is there a natural affinity for it? Sure. It's more impressive if it isn't how you were built or how you were wired.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So how do you build it day

[Ryan Holiday]

by day, minute by minute, action by action? Aristotle says virtue is not any different than being a builder. You become a builder by building things, you become generous by being generous, you become strong by doing things that require strength. You know, you, you become disciplined by making disciplined decisions. Little ones which lead to big ones which add up in a big way.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So what do you say to somebody in this modern world? They're doom scrolling, they've got six only fans, subscriptions, they're, you know, on porn. Instead of building relationships for people that are struggling, how do they pull out of that? How do they get it going in the right direction?

[Ryan Holiday]

I think you start small. You start with something. You start with something, you know, I'm gonna stop this. This, like, this is why I think, you know, sober January is so great. Just like, don't try to quit alcohol as a whole, which you may need to do. But I'm gonna quit for one month and then I'm gonna first learn that I'm capable of quitting for a day in two days and three days and four days and five days until I' streak of 30 days. And then I'm also going to get the evidence, the information that says, hey, I feel better when I don't do this thing. I'm better at X, Y and Z when I don't do this thing. Now, obviously, look, there are certain people who have addictions or you're at rock bottom. You got to quit cold turkey right now. You don't have time for a thing. But I do think there's something about starting small and building, learning once again the power of cause and effect and the power that you have to bring about cause and effect. And oftentimes when you see someone who is broken apart, who is failing, who is struggling, they have lost their faith in those in that thing. You know, they have lost. It's been a long time since they had any evidence of their own human agency, their own power over their own lives, life. And you got to start by reestablishing that somewhere, however small.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I love it. Where can people follow you and drink up more of this wisdom?

[Ryan Holiday]

Daily dad is the parenting thing that I write every day. So you can go. You can get that for free at Daily dad or listen to it as a podcast. And then the Daily Stoic is the same thing, free every day. Goes out to 600,000 people all over the world every single morning. And then if you're watching this on YouTube, we're @Daily Stoic.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I love it.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, everybody. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

[Ryan Holiday]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Ryan Holiday]

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