The 5-Step Stoic Routine for Clear Thinking | Maria Semple

The difference between reacting and thinking clearly starts with how you begin your day. In this episode, Ryan sits down with bestselling author Maria Semple to break down the Stoic routine she uses each morning. They talk about how a daily practice of reflection, intention, and perspective can change the way you approach everything from small annoyances to life’s biggest challenges. Maria Semple is the bestselling author of Today Will Be Different, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and This One Is Mine. Her new novel, Go Gentle, is about a Stoic philosopher living in New York City. Before writing fiction, Maria wrote for TV shows like Arrested Development, 90210, Mad About You, Ellen, and more. 📚 Grab a signed copy of Go Gentle by Maria Semple | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎥 VIDEO EPISODES| Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so my February got blown up and it was a pretty absurd chain of events. Certainly, life can be interrupted by really bad, negative things, a diagnosis, a change in the economy, if somebody says or does something and it causes all sorts of problems in a negative way. But we sometimes forget how often our lives can just be positively impacted, can go in a very exciting new direction as a result of something you never would have guessed would happen. And that happened for me when I got an Instagram DM

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  from a producer at Harpo. If you've never heard of Harpo, maybe just spell it backwards, right? That's Oprah's production company. And they said, hey, Oprah just read your book and would like you to come do an interview with her in Maui. And I said, what? Is this real? At first, I actually thought it was a scam. If people with podcasts know this, there's a scam sort of going around where someone will message you, they're pretending to be a producer for a big show like Rogan or Huberman or actually, we almost fell for one the other day, where they're just impersonating a producer and then they sort of get you on the hook and then they, oh, we need this or we need that. And then they start asking either for financial information or personal information. I thought that's kind of what it was at first.

• 1:44Ryan Holiday?

  And then I got on the phone with the producer and no, it was very real. It was Harpo. So I got my whole family, including my in-laws, on a flight to Maui, took my kids out of school for a week. They had a four-day weekend, so we kind of stretched it a little bit, got a nice, lovely, I don't want to say vacation, but lovely working trip out of it. I'll remember that always. That was lovely. You might have seen some of the shots in the Daily Stoic videos we've been doing.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Oprah had read The Obstacle is the Way. My first question is, but how did she hear about it? This is a 10 year old book. It turns out she heard about not just my book, but Stoicism in general, from a new novel. This novel, lo and behold, was sitting on my wife's bedstand. It had been mailed to me, but she stole it and didn't give it to me, by Maria Semple. You may have heard of her other book, Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, which was a huge seller a few years back. Anyway, she has a new book called Go Gentle. And in the novel, the main character is a Stoic philosopher, philosopher who's tutoring the children of this wealthy family in New York City.

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  And Oprah had loved Maria's book. She'd selected it for her book club, but it also sent her down a rabbit hole of Stoicism, which is how she found The Obstacle is the Way. So as soon as I got back, I emailed Maria and said, we've never met, but you changed the direction of my life. And I loved your book. Do you want to come to the Daily Stoic Podcast? I'll let you know when my interview on the Oprah Podcast is out. But this conversation is going to come first because Maria's new book is out now. So you might be thinking, a novel about Stoicism, not into it. Let me tell you, Maria knows her shit. This is probably one of the most in-depth conversations into Stoicism that I've ever had on the podcast.

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I got to nerd out more about it with her than I have with academics and translators of the Stoics. So this conversation is great. Maria's new book is out now, and it's lovely. I think you will really like it. She's the author of four novels. Today Will Be Different, Where'd You Go, Bernadette? And this one is mine, the new one, Go Gentle. And that book Oprah decided to make her book club pick, which is an incredible, like, sort of holy grail in publishing. Before she was an author, she wrote for shows like Arrested Development and 90210, Mad About You, Ellen and more. She signed a bunch of copies of Go Gentle at the Painted Porch, some of the first copies that she had in hand. You can follow Maria on Instagram, at Maria Semple.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  And I think you're really going to like this episode. Let's go.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  So I went to sleep last night and I thought that I heard like nightingales chirping. And then I kind of, like in the middle of the night, I woke up and heard kind of nightingales and went back to sleep. And then I woke up in the morning and there were like mama birds feeding baby birds.

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  And it was beautiful, but then, then I woke up and realized it was the toilet leaking the whole time. And so I thought that's like a perfect stoic thing of reframing.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  It's all how you decided to see it. It's beautiful or it's disgusting.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  That's right. And so I just felt like I was in this magical, like fairy wonderland, like woodland of, of birds, night and day. And then I realized it was like, that goddamn toilet's leaking. And if I had recognized it as the toilet leaking, I would have had a horrible night's sleep and I would have just been worked myself up. And then it was, but it really was, it's just the power of if you reframe things. I thought that was a good little mini lesson in that.

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  One of my favorite memes is like, you go and visit the Grand Canyon and it's okay. And then it's like the sunset in a random grocery store parking lot. And you know, like, and it's just like, what is this?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  That's actually one of my favorite passages in meditations where Marx realized is sort of like observing all these beautiful things in nature that actually aren't that beautiful. They're pretty ordinary. He talks about like, you know, like the way grain is kind of just bending under its own weight, or he talks about, you know, flecks of foam on a boar's mouth. Or my favorite, this is such a, only a writer would notice this. He's like, the way that bread breaks open in the oven.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  And we don't really know why it does that.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  It just does it. And he's like, the baker's not doing it on purpose.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  But it's still a benefit of the baker's art. You go, oh, the, all the study, because the Romans had such a focus on poetry in place. He just learned turns of phrase and he's applying it to seemingly ugly things.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 6:17Ryan Holiday?

  Or not beautiful things and managing to find beauty in them.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so great. And I, that's, I mean, why I love Epictetus is I just think he brings just all this potential out of everyday like objects and, and just anything you come across during the day, you just see the, the opportunity it is, you know, for, for growth or, you know, just for, to shift your perspective. He's very like domestic, which is what I like about him.

• 6:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I just wrote this email for Daily Stoic, the Daily Stoic email where James Baldwin is walking with his mentor. Is it James Buford? I forget the, it's something Buford. And they're walking in New York City and as they're crossing the street, Buford stops Baldwin and he points, he goes, do you see that? And Baldwin's like, it's a mighty puddle. And he's like, no, no, no, look, from this angle, you can see the oil on top of the water, creating like that rainbow that oil does and the reflection. They could see the buildings in the reflection. And he's saying that Buford in seeing allows him to see. And that that's kind of the, I think in a way, that's what a philosopher does, that's what an artist does, which is it sees

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  beauty in the mundane, or it sees potential in the ugly, or the opportunity inside the obstacle. And they allow other people, in pointing it out, allow other people to see it.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much. So I think that's really why I love the Stoics is because it really lets me unleash my imagination on just everyday occurrences or just the natural world or something, is I feel like it, unlike kind of faith or religions that don't, I can, I really like get fired up and like tweak out on like, wait, what's a different way I can see this? This is all the different perspective and it really engages like the writer in me.

• 8:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, sometimes people, they're like, okay, so what is it, what are the Stoics telling me to do? And it's like, it's actually not really telling you to do anything. It's just these kind of like different ways of running something through your brain. It's just, it's not actually doing anything in the way that meditation is sitting there and

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:16Ryan Holiday?

  Doing it. It's like, no, no, no, you're just, it's just different slices on the same situation. That's the thing. It's like, oh, you don't, you don't control that New York City is, is what it is. But you control if you look at the puddle as something ugly and disgusting, or you look at it as something kind of beautiful and modern and surreal.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  That's right. It really is good for the artistic mind. And I think in just, you don't have to be an artist to do it. But I mean, I would hope that people who are into Stoicism would understand that like, oh, I didn't get a job. I didn't get the job I wanted, but then, oh, there's all these other doors open to you and what could they be?

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  You just didn't get a shitty job. You actually would have hated it and would have been horrible. And you can decide how, what story you're going to tell yourself.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  That's right. And it's actually really fun.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so give me your Stoicism origin story.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  It's a mystery. I don't quite know how I came across it, but I feel like I thought it was in the New York Times, like the Stone, remember they used to have a philosophy column? And I read about it and it seemed really wise and like it just seemed like something I could do. And already just reading about it brought me relief. Now, I've now since gone back and tried to find that article and I can't find it, but I just read something about it and what I figure it must have-

• 9:29Ryan Holiday?

  When would this have been?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  This would have been maybe 15 years ago.

• 9:32Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  And, and I think probably it was about use wisdom, apply wisdom to figure out what you can control, what you cannot control, only worry about what, you know, the Serenity Prayer, basically is like, which we all love, where we're all like, whoa, the Serenity Prayer. But it's like, oh, this is the 300 B.C. Serenity Prayer, you know?

• 9:51Ryan Holiday?

  Did it come to you at some time when you really needed that? Or why do you think it struck you?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I, I think generally I'm, I, I struggle with my emotions, I'd say, with just like being, I was like being ruled by my emotions, you know? And so this felt like it could bring relief to that, you know? And so I read, I think William Irvine, that book, that was like the first book that I read. And it was really about just intention-

• 10:15Ryan Holiday?

  The Guide to the Good Life?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  The Guide to the Good Life, which is basically like, you're just gonna be a mess and have no idea what you're doing and you're gonna die and go like, I, what was that about, man? I had no plan. I had no idea of like what I had and I wasted it. And you can like live with intention. And so that was interesting to me. And then quickly I just went into the Stoics themselves, you know, Seneca, and then probably Marcus Aurelius. I really love Epictetus.

• 10:43Ryan Holiday?

  Is he your guy?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Epictetus, it's so funny. I feel like Marcus is your guy, right? Yeah, yeah. And like, um, Tim Ferriss is a Seneca guy, right?

• 10:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I, I do-

• 10:53Ryan Holiday?

  That's exactly, that, yes, that's exactly-

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right. Epictetus is my guy. And it's funny, because in one of your books, you refer to him as preachy. Do you still stand by that?

• 11:01Ryan Holiday?

  He's the worst writer of them.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  So like, I mean, he's not actually writing because someone, Arian is writing that.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:10Ryan Holiday?

  What you are getting when you sit down and read Epictetus is literally a man preaching. You're listening to a professor speak about Stoicism.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:19Ryan Holiday?

  And then that's filtered through Arian, his student. And I mean, I think there's a lot of great stuff in Epictetus. The Incoridion of Epictetus I like better than the discourses of Epictetus.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 11:30Ryan Holiday?

  Because it is filtered down and edited in a way that you're getting to the core of it. I just think Marcus Aurelius, to be doing that in private and to write that well, it is unimaginable.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 11:43Ryan Holiday?

  Like, he's just such a great writer. I think that's why I like Marcus Aurelius the most. And then Seneca is also an incredible writer.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Such a good writer. Oh, my gosh.

• 11:50Ryan Holiday?

  So it's kind of hard to compare Epictetus to him because he was doing something very different. He's, you're, you're listening to transcripts of a lecture. I think that's, that's maybe why I've said he was preaching.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  What I love that Sharon LaBelle, translation, and I think that she really does New Age it up a bit.

• 12:05Ryan Holiday?

  Translation.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, translation, no, which is kind of wild that, that, and in fact, in my book, Go Gentle, not to pivot to my book, but.

• 12:12Ryan Holiday?

  You talk about this.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I do.

• 12:14Ryan Holiday?

  I've interviewed her.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yes, so I make her a philosopher. When I was thinking about what do I do with my main character, I want to make her a philosopher, like a Stoic. But then I thought I'd have to have her learn Greek after she was a TV comedy writer and is, do we believe that? Or, or Latin or whatever it was. And so, but then I read the, Sharon LaBelle just kind of read the American, I mean, the, the English, the English translations.

• 12:39Ryan Holiday?

  She's translated it not from one language to another, but from one context to another.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:45Ryan Holiday?

  And which is, is its own service.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yes. And so that's kind of why I felt like, okay, I can make, that's, that's what my, what my character does. Is to kind of dumb it down and make it kind of nice for the people, you know? And so I, and so maybe that's why I like it is because it's, it's, it's very.

• 13:01Ryan Holiday?

  It was very good. It was one of the first Stoic things that I read in that. Actually, I wonder if it even informs my understanding of Epictetus because I was a little disappointed when I read Epictetus. I read that first and then I read Epictetus and I was like. Are you sure he didn't say it that way?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:14Ryan Holiday?

  And it's like, no, he didn't. And so it's like, he said it worse.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  He did.

• 13:18Ryan Holiday?

  And so she, she does such a great job distilling it down. That's a classic, great introductory distillation.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Right. And so, so what I did was I, and then of course, like I got your book, The Daily Stoic, which I just loved. And I have my copy here. I'm very excited for you to sign it.

• 13:32Ryan Holiday?

  I just, in my email today.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:34Ryan Holiday?

  Got confirmation that my, I, I have sent in from my publisher, the 10 year anniversary of, of the, of The Daily Stoic. So we just did, we changed a bunch of the entries and whatever. So it's, it's now 10 years old.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  I'll have to get a new one.

• 13:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  So I'd say with The Daily Stoic, plus the Stoics themselves, I would just every morning sit and read the Stoics and then start to try to come up with how to practice Stoicism. Cause there was, I didn't know how to do it. I kind of looked, maybe there were meetups, but they seemed like kind of scary and like weirdos or whatever. And I didn't know that I wanted to.

• 14:06Ryan Holiday?

  I don't like meeting people, so.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't want to just drive an hour and a half away and then you're going to be scared by everyone you meet and then turn against your passion as a result. So I didn't do that. And so I then just started on my own, coming up with, what does it mean for me to be a Stoic? And so I came up with my philosophy of life, based on William Irvine.

• 14:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And it took me years to kind of refine that. And then I have like a daily, you know, maybe like five step Stoic practice that I would just do by myself, which now just seems so kind of tragic and sweet that I just invented my own little Stoic practice.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  What is your five, what is your five step daily Stoic practice?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, so what I do is I write down my philosophy of life. Let me read it, just so I don't stumble on it. My daily goal is to bring my actions, desires and thoughts into harmony with my philosophy of life. My philosophy of life is virtue equals freedom. The four Stoic virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. Virtue is the only good. Its pursuit is the only guarantee of achieving abiding good cheer, secure joy, and a tranquil mind. Okay, so that's like what I realize is my philosophy of life. And then what I do is I go to the to the virtue list. So then I've I've written the four virtues down and I put a bunch of descriptions, like subsets of the virtues.

• 15:26Ryan Holiday?

  Walk me through why you put them in this order. I'm curious, as someone who just did a series on the four virtues, why did you pick them? And why do you put them in this order?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Okay, so wisdom is first?

• 15:34Ryan Holiday?

  I don't put wisdom first. I mean, I want to know why you put them first.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, I think wisdom comes first because I think it applies to all the other ones. I think that that without knowing what's in your control and what's out of your control, you can't, like, you need wisdom for that. So I think that that's the the crown of it, you know? And then because they all are the things that you can control. So I feel like somehow that goes to the top.

• 15:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I sometimes tell people, I think wisdom can be misleading, but if you if you saw it as discernment.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 16:03Ryan Holiday?

  Then then, oh, okay, yeah, sure, because it's telling you what level of courage to bring to a situation, telling you what situations to.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:11Ryan Holiday?

  What the right thing to do in a situation is, how much is too too much and not enough, right?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 16:18Ryan Holiday?

  It's shaping and informing the volume on the other three virtues.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  That's right. So that's number one. And do I have, see, what do I have there as number two?

• 16:25Ryan Holiday?

  And you're justice next.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Okay, see, I'll tell you why I have justice next, which is kind of funny, is that I was talking to Donald Robinson once, and I had courage next, and he kind of bullied me into putting justice next because it's not funny, because he was like, well, and he did this, he was like, why isn't justice higher up?

• 16:44Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah, it's like courage, courage for what?

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 16:48Ryan Holiday?

  Like, what is the courage being applied to?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 16:51Ryan Holiday?

  And if it's not to the right thing, then it's not so impressive. It's certainly not virtue.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right. And also, the thing about justice is, I think, I mean, it's been such a years-long process is, justice feels, I mean, all of the words are kind of problematic, like virtue, you know, like, it's not cool going to dinner and going, yeah, all I could do is care about virtue. It just seems preachy and justice seems preachy and.

• 17:18Ryan Holiday?

  I knew it could not be in the title of the book.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you can't do it, you know.

• 17:22Ryan Holiday?

  People are like, I don't care about the law.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  I don't care about the law. Yeah, and I don't want to hear it from you, you know, about why you're, I'm not gonna have you tell me what to do. That's just what unfortunately applies now. So, but once I understood it's about like being kind to other people and treating people well and then just kind of understanding, like, it's kind of a boundary thing in a way is justice, you know.

• 17:44Ryan Holiday?

  It's ethics and standards and, yes.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And so, and then it's what do you put your effort into in terms of other people, you know? And so that to me is like very rich territory. And then I probably have courage. And so courage is just so great, you know, it's like about work to me. It's like I do, it's, it's, to me, courage is about work.

• 18:04Ryan Holiday?

  What do you mean by that?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  It's just hard work, I feel like, to just, to do the writing, to go to the gym, to do the hard things, you know, is, is to me.

• 18:13Ryan Holiday?

  So this is where, this is where I disagree with the Stoics and I disagree with you.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:17Ryan Holiday?

  When I did this series, I think endurance and resilience, I think they go down in.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Into temperance?

• 18:23Ryan Holiday?

  Temperance and self-discipline.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 18:25Ryan Holiday?

  So you think courage is, is the showing up?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, see, like if I'm in a plank.

• 18:29Ryan Holiday?

  Putting yourself out there?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  If I'm in a plank, it's like courage. I'm just going like courage, you know.

• 18:34Ryan Holiday?

  Wow, that's self-discipline.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Okay, no, but, but.

• 18:37Ryan Holiday?

  One part of you wants to do the easy thing and another part of you wants to do the hard thing.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:42Ryan Holiday?

  And you, you have to have the will and the strength to get there, to me.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Do, getting into the plank position is discipline. Being in plank is courage for me. Do you know what I mean? It's like the physical thing of just like fighting against the plank.

• 18:56Ryan Holiday?

  I would say the decision to go to the gym and be vulnerable and work on yourself.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:02Ryan Holiday?

  Is courage. But the doing, the deciding to do an extra mile on the treadmill is not courage, it's self-discipline.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Okay, I get that. Okay, I get that. But courage now, you know what's interesting? The courage for me is now. Turning into is more about, it's like contempt for conformity.

• 19:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 19:20Ryan Holiday?

  Definitely.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  And I think that's so relevant now.

• 19:23Ryan Holiday?

  Worse.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  And I feel like just it's almost one, the life project is just now that we're all in this kind of digital panopticon of just like, are we thinking for ourselves?

• 19:32Ryan Holiday?

  Classic moral courage.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Right? So it's like moral courage, I think, is just becoming really urgent to me personally. And, and it's so easy to slip into just the mob.

• 19:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  You know, so that's really important to me. And then, and then temperance, you call it self-discipline, right? That's interesting.

• 19:48Ryan Holiday?

  Just because temperance is also a shitty word.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that's true.

• 19:53Ryan Holiday?

  Like, yeah, Epictetus said that you could summarize all stoicism in two words, persist and resist.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:59Ryan Holiday?

  So it's doing the things you should do, not doing the things.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:03Ryan Holiday?

  You shouldn't do. To me, that's, that's temperance in a nutshell.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  See, I think I like temperance personally because I think like I talk too much or I talk a lot and I just want to be like, don't talk so much, which is not.

• 20:14Ryan Holiday?

  Discipline, though?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  It is, but I think temperance, there's just like a coolness to it. It's just like, okay, just chill, you know? And I feel like I personally.

• 20:24Ryan Holiday?

  Even keel part of stoicism.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I feel like I might need that. And it's about like not talking so much, not, you know, talking less, you know, talking wisely, humility, knowing your place. I mean, a really big thing for me, just like the psychology of it is just that, that's really freeing, is just knowing your place in the system you're in.

• 20:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Because we can all just go in and feel like we're the biggest thing. It's all about me. All that matters is like.

• 20:52Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  What I'm going to take away from the daily Stoic podcast, goddamn, you know, whatever. But it's like, no, there's a whole system here that's happening. And so I feel like especially when it comes to business stuff, when I was working in Hollywood, you know, when, and I was have my. I'd say values skewed is you would just want it so badly, you know, and that a project going would just be

• 21:14Ryan Holiday?

  You have so little control over everything.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Right. And these other people have lives, they have problems. And so I think temperance to me is just like, I call it, I call it like right sizing my life. You know, where you just like, put yourself properly in the scheme of things. And I think that's a real spiritual practice.

• 21:33Ryan Holiday?

  Okay. So to go back to the five minute sort of daily stoicism practice. So you write those things and then you just, you just think about these four virtues in the morning?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  No, what I do is I figure out what I have to do that day, like whatever it is. And then I go to the virtue list and I will pick one or circle one or two. And it's all in a journal and like, I literally copy down my philosophy of life.

• 21:53Ryan Holiday?

  You write, you write this first part.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Every single day.

• 21:56Ryan Holiday?

  You write this every single day?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Every single day I write it and I write that every day. And it used to be, and I write about this in Go Gentle, but it for 10 years, it was virtue equals happiness. And only a couple of months ago, I changed it to virtue equals freedom. Because I think freedom is so much bigger than happiness.

• 22:14Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Right? And that's what I realized that I think I was doing it for happiness for a long time. And now what I've achieved is freedom. And I'm like, no, that's the fucking bomb is freedom. And so that to me is virtue equals freedom. And so, so I've been refining. So then I figure out what virtues I need. And then my next thing is to clarify my purpose. And I have the quotes there of my purpose quotes that I love, which is like Seneca without

• 22:38Ryan Holiday?

  And this goes to what do you have to do today? What am I trying to do? What is a successful day for me? What are the challenges I'm likely to face today?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 22:45Ryan Holiday?

  What's, what do I need to bring my stoicism to today?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then that, and I'm a writer and many of the days when I'm working on a novel, it's like my writing, it's just about get off the internet. Don't look at my phone. It's really just a whole elaborate system to not be on the internet, basically stoicism for me. You know, and I think it's very relevant for that reason. And so that's what I do is then just kind of like get my, get my game head on. And those I just read, you know, and I just kind of like fire myself up.

• 23:14Ryan Holiday?

  If you don't know what port you're sailing to, no wind is favorable. Love of bustle is not industry. You know, it's not that life is short, so we waste too much of it. We're defined by what we devote our energy to. Don't do anything with a begrudging spirit. Agree to do it with promptness and courage.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 23:29Ryan Holiday?

  So you just, you just kind of run through these quotes as kind of helpful reminders and mantras.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, to fire myself up for the game, you know? So I do that. And then what I do is I go to the, I pick one of my daily journal exercises.

• 23:42Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And so, and it's like, desire what I have. Desire what's in my control. Turn have to into get to.

• 23:51Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny, you clearly struggle with that because you have it twice.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 23:54Ryan Holiday?

  You have turn have to into get to, and then you write, I get to do this.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Exactly that. I mean, this is like, my, my little book is very revealing about my inner soul. No, that's what it is. It's like, I protest too much.

• 24:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't want to do it, but I know I have to. Or I'm resenting it. And you're like, how do I flip this and, and focus on that I'm alive?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:14Ryan Holiday?

  And that I, by the way, this is my dream.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  It's my, I am living the dream.

• 24:30Ryan Holiday?

  To go back to Seneca's quote, it is foolish to undertake anything with a lazy and begrudging spirit. Anything you agree to do, do it with promptness and courage.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:38Ryan Holiday?

  Like, you signed up for this.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:39Ryan Holiday?

  Do it, be glad to do it, don't do it, you know, it's spitting, you know? Don't do it reluctantly and, and with bitterness.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  And I think no complaining is to me under temperance, right? I think I put that under temperance.

• 24:51Ryan Holiday?

  I would agree.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  And so, so to me, that's what I do is I pick something and then I really frame my day that way, you know? It's like, I get to do this. It's like, I also love desire what you have. That to me is like, it's just, it's like a drug to me.

• 25:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  It's like, I'm sitting, I'm like, oh, you know what I wish I had is like this apartment on the Upper West Side? It's like, I have an apartment on the Upper West Side.

• 25:15Ryan Holiday?

  I try to remind myself, hey, you wanted to write one book.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:18Ryan Holiday?

  You know, you're, you're so, this is what you wanted more than anything.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Anything.

• 25:23Ryan Holiday?

  You get to do it. You are doing it. Focus on that, not what, and there is a great, there's a Marcus Truitt's quote where he says, think about the things that you have.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:31Ryan Holiday?

  And how if you didn't have them, how desperately you'd want them. And also I think it's worth saying, maybe this is less stoic, but I go, think about how many people would kill.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:42Ryan Holiday?

  To have with this because they're currently starving in a hut somewhere.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:45Ryan Holiday?

  Or because. They're on the outside clawing for just one of the 20 breaks that you've gotten in your career.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 25:53Ryan Holiday?

  Even though it's so tempting to be jealous of what others have, it's helpful to be reminded of how jealous others are of you. Even, you know, if you're in a jail in America, it's better than being like, there are people in a jail cell in some other country who would kill to be incarcerated here.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  That's right. No, it isn't. So I feel like I'm so living the dream. And also, I think probably like you, my days can be very, can be varied, especially now that I have a book coming out. There's just all these different, and I love that. I love novelty and I love, oh, I get to do an interview today. And then tomorrow I've, there's a photo shoot or I don't, there's just all these events and things. And, and that's kind of fun to realize I get to do this because I, my last book was 10 years ago, you know? And that this is all I ever wanted out of this book was to finish the book and have the book like actually work, you know? Now that it is, it really is something I dreamed of for 10 years and felt like in the depths of despair, like, oh, this book's not going to work.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I'm never going to write another book, you know, maybe I just, everything I had to say, I already put it in books. So this is such a wonderful like chapter and, and I've got to just bring every amount of positivity to it. And I think optimism I have under courage. Is that what you say?

• 27:12Ryan Holiday?

  I think, I think.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Or is that temperance?

• 27:13Ryan Holiday?

  No, I think hope is both courage and I would say wisdom.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Right. Oh, wisdom. Okay. Because I'm very, I'm also kind of drifting into the optimism thing as being like very powerful. Cause I think I maybe discounted it for a while of just like, oh, who needs that?

• 27:29Ryan Holiday?

  When you have that famous quote from, from Seneca in here about hope and fear being the same. But I don't know if I totally agree. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a powerful idea, but I, I also think there is something about, I think the Stoics could have used a bit more hope.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I agree. And I'll say, hope equals fear. That really was my gateway concept. It's maybe Seneca's first letter, I feel like. It's in that letters-

• 27:55Ryan Holiday?

  And he's quoting another philosopher.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  From a Stoic, right? But, right? It's like, isn't it one- And I think that was the first direct thing I read of the Stoics was the letters of Seneca.

• 28:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  And I read that and I was just like, gay mom, that is like crazy, you know, but I understood. And the other, I think it's almost in the same sentence, is that the soldier doesn't, isn't dragged by fate. Or no, it, no, it's like, you need to willingly go into your fate. You can't just complain and drag your feet about life or something. But I feel like that's in the same paragraph. And that really was, was the thing that I was like, okay, this is really interesting and I want to do more of this.

• 28:31Ryan Holiday?

  This idea of saying to yourself, like, hey, I get to do this. I'm lucky. To me, one of the, one of the places it's really important to remind yourself of that is, is as a parent. You go like, hey, how many couples are struggling with infertility right now? How many parents have buried, how many families have buried a child?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:46Ryan Holiday?

  You get to do this.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:47Ryan Holiday?

  You, you and your spouse struggled, hoped, wanted this. This thing that you're now like, oh, well, they just go to sleep or like, oh, I can't believe we gotta, we gotta go to drive all- Like, all the stuff that bothers you about a parent, you were dreaming of being lucky enough to get to do. And you do get to do it. And then it's worth reminding yourself that at some point in the not so distant future, you will be jealous of, as you're dragging your kids through the airport and you're carrying the car seats and you're, they're whining and they want a pretzel and all that.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:19Ryan Holiday?

  And then 10 years from now, you will be walking through an airport without your children. And you will see someone else do it. And you will be filled with nostalgia and jealousy of that person who you are in the middle of complaining about while you're in it. You'll be jealous of yourself.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Of yourself.

• 29:35Ryan Holiday?

  And mad that you begrudgingly got through this moment.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:40Ryan Holiday?

  Instead of going like, I only get to do this so many times.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  It's so amazing you use that, that example because that's when, almost like my, my deepest sadness is going through airports, is about that of like, oh, the family trips and we used to go and she was little and we missed the plane and after one, like, carry her and run and all that stuff that just seems so awful at the time. And now whenever I see a family's traveling, it just like hits me in a place that Stoicism cannot touch. You know, it's like very powerful.

• 30:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I was talking to Dr. Pressman. She wrote this great parenting book and I was telling her how my son is just utterly obsessed with Hamilton and he listens to it every night when he goes to bed. He'd be in the car for once and turn on Hamilton.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Oh, I love it.

• 30:22Ryan Holiday?

  It's like, if I have to listen to this Hamilton song one more time, I'm gonna kill myself. And she was like, I went through the same thing with my daughter and then she got over it. And she was like, the other day, it came on in the car.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:34Ryan Holiday?

  And I was ju- she was just like, I was just overwhelmed with a wave of sadness and nostalgia and affection for this like thing that was such a part of my life. It's like, you know, it's not gonna last.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:45Ryan Holiday?

  And you're in the middle of begrudgingly resenting it and enduring it and suffering through it as if not that long in the future, you would give anything to go back to this moment that you're wasting.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Well, well, something that's related to that is Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk, talks about the non-toothache state. That basically, when you have a toothache, you're like, all I want is this toothache to be over. Like, I'd do anything not to have a toothache. And then you don't have a toothache and you totally discount it.

• 31:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And so he's saying like, go, you go through life, like, realize you're in a non-toothache state. So I always think about that, the non-toothache state.

• 31:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. You have the thing that you desperately wanted and in the future will desperately want again.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:29Ryan Holiday?

  But you can't allow yourself to just be in it. But if you tell yourself, hey, I get to do, I get to drive them through traffic today.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 31:36Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I get to take the trash out today. I get to, whatever it is, you tell yourself, I get to do it. One thing we know for certain is you don't get to do it an unlimited amount of times.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. So, so, so that really helps me.

• 31:49Ryan Holiday?

  So this is your Stoic practice? Is there any other parts of it after the journaling?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Well, well, then, then what I do is then if there's, if I'm, if I'm really flipping out, then I have this many-step protocol for how to calm myself down about it. And that's, that's many steps, but that's, if you flip through the gray pages are like my journaling.

• 32:08Ryan Holiday?

  How long does this practice take you every morning?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Well, and then, then of course, I read the Stoics every day. It's really just Seneca's letters, meditations and epictetus. No, I'm reading. One of them and then I just like, you know, get to the end of it, then read the next one and read the next one.

• 32:24Ryan Holiday?

  And start it over.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I also do the daily Stoic every day. Yeah. And so I do that every day, but I maybe read two or three or whatever. It's not like I do it according to the day. I really do set a timer. So I don't read too much philosophy because it is so easy to read. That's the thing that you want to just beg everyone to understand when they think like, oh, Miss Thing going around reading philosophy. And it's like, it's so easy. It's so easy to read this stuff. It's so pleasurable. It doesn't take any learning to just get into Seneca's letters. They're amazing.

• 32:52Ryan Holiday?

  And then, and then, yeah, you gotta have the self-discipline to close the thing and go to your actual, real life.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And then I write, but I'm really like got my head in it, you know, I'm like, let's, let's go, you know? And what's interesting is when you write a novel, like my novel is about all these different things, you know? It's about a woman who's single and in her late 50s and kind of starting life over. It's about philosophy. There's all this stuff about misogyny and sexual assault in it. It's a romance. It's art theft. It's like all this crazy shit in this book. It's crazy. It's really a lot. And now that the book is kind of getting out in the world, really the, the thing that people are going nuts over is the Stoicism. Which and, and moms and things that I never would have thought and people. I mean, I've gotten so many messages already of like, I want to read Adora's Stoic books. I want to read the, you know, I want to read her books.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And so I, I thank you in my book in the back of my acknowledgements, but also the other writers that I think people should go to. But there is this tendency that people don't want to read the Stoics themselves. I'm sure you found this, right? And there's this resistance. I mean, but lucky for you, they want to read you. And so that's like, good that you.

• 33:54Ryan Holiday?

  No, I, I always try to remind people like, nobody said it better than the Stoics.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 33:59Ryan Holiday?

  And so people go like, what would be a good Stoic book for my 16 year old? It's like, if your 16 year old lived in, in ancient Greece or Rome, they'd just be reading the originals.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 34:09Ryan Holiday?

  And they thought that you were more than mentally capable of reading that.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:12Ryan Holiday?

  And I think we sometimes baby kids and people about books like, there is no one who is not capable of reading the Stoics. What I try to do in my books is, as you try to do in yours, is to take the ideas and illustrate them.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:24Ryan Holiday?

  Or portray them in, in what it might look like in either a real or a fictional situation, which is different. Than laying out the idea itself.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 34:31Ryan Holiday?

  Right?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  No, and you use all the great like stories throughout history. I mean, I feel like I could, I probably not win Jeopardy, maybe come in second in Jeopardy, just from reading all about your historical examples.

• 34:41Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's just me crisscrossing my two favorite things, which is Stoicism and history.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:46Ryan Holiday?

  I do think Stoicism, like people tend to assume that everyone who's interested in Stoicism is a dude.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:53Ryan Holiday?

  Right? It has a masculine energy. I think that's changing, but, but why do you think it struck you as, as a woman? And why do you think women who are reading the novel are so lit up about that theme?

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Interesting. Well, and that's what I love about the Oprah aspect of it is I feel like, wow, maybe this is gonna like, turn moms and, you know, women onto Stoicism, which would be like just so weird. And, and I would be so, it just makes me so happy, the thought of that. But, and I haven't really given it much thought, but now that you say it, I think that I offer a kind of a softer version of Stoicism in my novel, which I feel like I've take, that I've engineered for myself over the years.

• 35:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  And that, and that.

• 35:38Ryan Holiday?

  What do you feel you're softening?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Well, so, so it's actually, it becomes the story of my novel, which is that I think when I first discovered Stoicism, I really loved the idea that there are like no victims, that everything that happened, oh, this is how I interpreted it. Everything that happened to me, it was a fault of my character. And I was responsible for my unhappiness, let's just say. I still believe that, but I think in the early days, it was very self punishing of me, you know? And it was self punishing. And so I think that chicks don't take to that, you know? As well as, as well as men do, I think, you know? But, but for a while, I'd say it, it's really liberating when you're like struggling with your emotions

• 36:23Speaker 01

  or your neuroses or, or whatever these patterns you can't get out of. For a moment, there's just this like self empowerment, which was like, I did it to myself, you know? Like you don't want to be a victim, you don't.

• 36:34Ryan Holiday?

  They didn't offend me. I took offense.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  I took offense. And so you're like, I can work with this, you know? I can do it. And so I think that what that can lead to is just being too like harsh on yourself, you know, and too, I don't want to, I don't think you can be too forgiving of other people, but just like keeping yourself maybe in situations that aren't good because you're like, I gotta just got through this, you know, it's all me, it's all me.

• 36:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And, and I think that may, that, that I personally don't like that, that I, and my, my novel's called, Go Gentle, you know, and it really is ultimately, it, it's, it, that's the journey of a Dora Hazard, is that she, you know, starts out being really harsh and it's like, you know, I looked for the quote and it wasn't really the quote, I'd misremembered it, but it was like, be hard on yourself and easy on others, isn't there Marcus?

• 37:22Ryan Holiday?

  Strict with yourself, tolerant of others.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Right, that's Marcus?

• 37:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Right, okay, so I felt that I had kind of overdone in my youth, you know, and, and so, and it's not that I've moved into like victimhood or blame or whatever, but there's just kind of a loosening of, of right now, I feel like, and it's also age really helps, just a, a lot of times when I explain why I like Stoicism, I say, it makes you philosophical, you know?

• 37:49Ryan Holiday?

  The lowercase, the lowercase p.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Lowercase p, it just you step.

• 37:53Ryan Holiday?

  Picture, perspective.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Does it really matter? It doesn't matter that much. It all just feels like, it's not that there's that much at stake, but it's like, you know, it's all gonna work out, you know?

• 38:04Ryan Holiday?

  Or it's not.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Or it's not, or it's not, but as, as you're the master of, is when it doesn't, it still does.

• 38:11Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's what I mean, like maybe your early read on Stoicism is like, it's all gonna work out, and then the, the more philosophical one is like, or maybe it won't, and that is also working itself out, you know?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And that works out, exactly.

• 38:22Ryan Holiday?

  It's just a, you just have a bigger perspective on things.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Also, I would say that I, and I'm very curious to hear what you think about this, is that I feel like there's not about, a lot about love in Stoicism. There's like justice and there's this thing, but-

• 38:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, well, where would you put love under the four virtues?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't think you put it anywhere. I mean, I think it doesn't belong there. I think that Christianity brought in love, you know? And then I think, I think I write about that in my book, that that's her big revelation, when she realizes that like Stoicism is limited. It can only like help her in, in certain ways of her life. But what about love and chaos? You know, those are human, those are great. Like, if I fell in love tomorrow, I mean, I'd be very interested because I like have not fallen in love as a Stoic, you know? But I would hope if I fall in love, I just lose my fucking mind. You know what I mean? And look, then, then I'd pay 10 times for it and the tenfold in the future of misery. But still, that's a human experience, you know? I want that. So what do you think about that?

• 39:35Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, I, I thought about this a lot during the, the virtue series, where do you put it? And I ended up putting it in, in injustice. Like our affection for each other, our connection to human beings, our obligations to each other. I told this story towards the end of Right Thing Right Now, about Charles de Gaulle and his wife had this daughter with Down syndrome. At a time when you like, you would ship a child like that away.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:01Ryan Holiday?

  And, and they don't. And she's like the apple of his eye and they go on these long walks together. They, they had, they had this like profoundly loving relationship. And the sort of philosophical beauty of that, as well as the, the sort of selflessness of that, and the sort of connecting to something bigger than yourself of that, strikes me as like what justice is ultimately about. Justice isn't like, hey, I, I, I gave you my word, I'm gonna do it. Or, or you know, like, I am scrupulously honest. It's the, the selflessness and the, the giving yourself over to things. So I, I put it there. And then I would probably also put it in, in wisdom, in the sense of like, what's this all for? If it's not for-

• 40:42Speaker 01

  For love.

• 40:42Ryan Holiday?

  For love and other people.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  And, but see, I'm talking about like madness, you know? Which, which I do think that there's value in it, you know? And, and when I write- It's all within the Stoic paradigm. Like, I'm not saying madness out of like, I can't write my books without madness. You know, like, no, no, I need to pull.

• 40:59Ryan Holiday?

  No, the irrational exuberance of those early days of falling in love with someone.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Falling in love. And then, and then, you know, my, there's a mother-daughter relationship in my book. And there's when the daughter's just being a nasty little bitch and she's like enjoying her and getting frustrated by her. And then they fall asleep together and they're falling, they have to sleep on an air mattress and she kind of hugs her daughter and she says, "The Stoic makes some good points, but none of them are mothers."

• 41:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  And, and I just think that love of a child that have just liked to be so bedeviled. And I don't want to reason myself out of the frustration and the craving of my daughter. You know?

• 41:36Ryan Holiday?

  There's this passage I think about in meditations all the time, which I think goes to this. And again, our perspective on who the Stoics were, we tend to, I, I just don't know if we fully give them credit for who they were as actual human beings, which is a little bit more well-rounded. This is Marx realist saying what he learns from sexism. He says kindness, an example of fatherly authority in the home, what it means to live as nature requires, to show intuitive sympathy for friends, tolerance for amateurs and sloppy thinkers, his ability to get along with everyone, sharing his company was the highest of compliments, the opportunity, blah, blah, blah, blah. Says not to display anger or other emotions, to be free of passion, yet full of love.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:17Ryan Holiday?

  So to me, he's talking about, how can you be philosophical and be Stoic within the frustrating, aggravating, beautiful, crazy, inexplicable-ness of human relationships, especially family and the people you care the most about.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 42:36Ryan Holiday?

  So I think, to me, what Stoicism is, is kind of like, well, look, let's get rid of the madness of anger, the madness of lust, or jealousy, or anxiety, or fear. Let's push those aside. And then if we're gonna make room for any of the passions, love is the one we're gonna make the exception for.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  But then it does get into attachment in, in a way that I think is good, you know? Like, it's very hard to love without attachment, you know?

• 43:00Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. And, and again, what the Stoics Right. And then you go, but Marcus, you had 11 children.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:05Ryan Holiday?

  So like clearly, clearly what he's trying to do is remind himself of how attachments can be irrational. Or, you know, how we can lose things or how you don't control their people. Within the context of, of the default being you have a family, you love your spouse, blah, blah, blah.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:23Ryan Holiday?

  So it's, it's like, people go, well, they say here, you know, ambition is bad. Don't have ambition. And it's like, yes, the person saying that was an extremely ambitious person.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:35Ryan Holiday?

  Like, they're not saying that because they're sitting in an ashram somewhere, not doing anything.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:41Ryan Holiday?

  Or in a year-long silent meditation retreat.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:44Ryan Holiday?

  They're saying that in the forum, running for this office or that office. And it's so it's, it, the context with which they're saying, it's not that they're hypocritical. It's that they're saying, hey, just understand what ambition is if you're going to have it. Cause you're, it's like, they're playing with the fire, but then also reminding themselves that it's dangerous.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 44:05Ryan Holiday?

  And I think that's an important lens on it.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, and that comes, that does come from age. I think a lot of it does, you know, or just experience. It's not even, it just comes from experience, you know, which is good.

• 44:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so to go to the female Stoic thing, I wanted to, so we did this video a couple of months ago about like Stoic women in history.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Good. Please let me know.

• 44:21Ryan Holiday?

  One of the ones we talked about was Portia Cato, cause Cato's daughter.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:25Ryan Holiday?

  Like, Cato's daughter is in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. She's married to Brutus. A lot of people don't know this.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 44:32Ryan Holiday?

  But so, so then there's this famous scene where to prove herself worthy of being included in the conspiracy. She stabs herself in the leg.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Okay. Oh, wow.

• 44:40Ryan Holiday?

  And then, and then binds up the wound just to see like, hey, could she withstand torture?

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:44Ryan Holiday?

  And when she does, she goes, anyways, so these are some of the comments. I thought you'd like this.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:49Ryan Holiday?

  The very essence of a woman's life is an exercise in Stoicism.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:52Ryan Holiday?

  I thought that was funny. She, and then this one, someone said, she stabbed herself in the thigh, bound the untreated womb, suffered with fever for several days. And her husband didn't even notice. Yeah, that tracks.

• 45:04Ryan Holiday?

  Considering what men have done to women throughout history, men are very lucky that so many women are stoic.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 45:10Ryan Holiday?

  Because I think about, you hear these stories about, it's like, this stoic gladly goes into exile. But it's like, who's he dragging along with him?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 45:18Ryan Holiday?

  Or who's staying behind?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 45:19Ryan Holiday?

  The person who not only had to put up with it and deal with the consequences, but who we don't even dignify with a name?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:25Ryan Holiday?

  Like, that's stoicism right there.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Well, I agree. And I do think that being a mother, that there are those, at a certain age, when the kid is sick and you're sick and you still have to be like the woman of the household and do those things, and then you have your work and you do that, you just put your head down and you do it. And I do, I will say, no hate, Ryan. I think women do a much better job at that than men do.

• 45:49Ryan Holiday?

  People are always like, women are so emotional. It's like, actually, it's, we portray emotional as being like crying or afraid. And then it's like, a dude gets angry and he punches a wall. And we're like, that's so masculine. It's like, that was extremely emotional. And Marx talks about that in Meditations. I was like, it's not manly to lose your temper and break things.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:10Ryan Holiday?

  I think about like our current political environment. I go, these are incredibly emotional, like fragile snowflakes.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:17Ryan Holiday?

  Who are going around saying like, women shouldn't be in combat roles because they're too sensitive.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really true. And I always think that women are so much more practical than men. I have that line in the book is when she talks about something and says, women, you can't accuse us of not being practical. Like, I think that we are extremely, and I think it scares men. And when they really see how practical women are, like I have my women friends and we practically like go through the problems. I think it would terrify men. And so I do think that, that women do have a certain, like they, there's just this baked in stoicism to how we go through the day that we don't get credit for. It's not like, we're not portraits in courage when we stay home with the kids. You know, a man is like, you know, oh my God, look, he's babysitting the kids tonight. And you're like, oh, you mean he's like co-parenting?

• 47:05Ryan Holiday?

  Being a dad, yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so there's like that type of thing. So I do, I think maybe that's why women, women maybe are responding to it. Is it's really already aligns with a lot of how they go through their days.

• 47:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's, it's Aeschylus or Euripides, whichever one fought the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. He famously said, you know, I would rather stand in battle three times than give birth once.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  That's, that's very true. No, I know. The childbirth thing is a whole other level.

• 47:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's crazy.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:39Ryan Holiday?

  These are the comments I thought you should, you should respond to. Okay, these are the last three. God, no. Maybe if they were raised to be stoic instead of following every fleeting emotion. Women are boring. Do you think catering to women is going to help your channel? I'm not watching this. And then it says, then why do women overreact so much? Why do they struggle so much with emotions? Why do they act so much on passions? Why do they struggle so much with discipline, indulging in pleasures and being so inconsistent? Why do they get all over the place every month? And it's like, the hilariousness of, I'm also thinking of like, how emotional do you have to be as a person to write that comment on a video under your real name?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 48:16Ryan Holiday?

  Not thinking through the consequences, but.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Well, I'd say that when, that when there's systems that are against you, you have to get your head on straight about it, you know, about like, how are you going to react in these situations? You know, and so I think that, that, I mean, women have certainly a degree of, of exposure to that. People of color, et cetera, et cetera, you know? And so I think that, that there are a lot of people who are, the system is set up against them. And so I think you do have to have a plan for that, you know? It's like, you gotta figure it out. Like, what is my? And that's where you need a philosophy of life, I think, because every injustice is going to make you angry, make you crazy. You know, one of my things that, that I, I say during my protocols

• 49:02Speaker 01

  for when I'm about to get wigged out or when I am getting wigged out about something and what to do is just like, don't make it worse, you know, is number one.

• 49:09Ryan Holiday?

  The first rule of holes.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yes, I have that in my book. The first rule of holes, man, is just don't make it worse like that. That is just, yeah, that's the, yeah, the first rule of holes is when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. And that's what I find, that I feel like with, that you do, you know, in specific situations, but just largely you have to come up with a plan and you really do. You want to be kind of Steve Jobs with the turtleneck, you know? You want to just be like, that's nothing that bothers me. Like, that's just, I've made an executive decision that I will not be, I won't go there. I won't start getting myself worked up. I won't bring other people into it. I won't talk about it constantly, you know? It's just like, not going to be my problem. And I do think then you get to be productive, you know? And then you get to write books and you get to do things with your time, you know?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  So I think you do have to come up with a plan.

• 49:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and I think sometimes people go, well, what could, what could the Stoics teach me? You know, this is just a bunch of privileged old white guys. And it's like, okay, first off, you have, you have no conception of what the Roman Empire was. Because you think they're all blond and blue eyes.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 50:13Ryan Holiday?

  Because you saw movies made in the 50s.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  But half of them were enslaved, first of all.

• 50:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's like, from Spain to Turkey to North Africa is an enormous swath of population, of different, you know, different skin colors and cultures and environments. And, and it's like, yeah, sure, you have Marcus Aurelius. But actually, the beauty of Stoicism is that you have Marcus Aurelius directly influenced by Epictetus.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:37Ryan Holiday?

  So you have extreme power who's wrestling with the fact that for all his power and success and fame, he's still constrained fundamentally by all the things in life he doesn't control.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:47Ryan Holiday?

  And then you have Epictetus, who, who is disadvantaged, discriminated, against, persecuted, abused, suffers, and yet for all of his seemingly, all the seemingly prescribed nature of his life, and the limitations, he's actually so powerful and has so much ownership of himself that, that Marcus Aurelius, and also Hadrian, two emperors who are changed by his work, are envious of him.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 51:16Ryan Holiday?

  And that, that's what the Stoics have to teach you.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Well, you know what, I, I think why Stoicism is big now, or why it's getting big, and why particularly with like the tech world or whatever, my theory about that is because it, it's when you have everything that should have made you happy and you're not happy.

• 51:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Right? And I think that this really answers that cry of the soul, as they say, you know, is that you're like, wow, I was supposed to, I should have been happy by now.

• 51:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  You know, like, society told me what to go after and I did it. You know, I got the witch's broom and now I'm still unhappy, you know? And how the fuck did that happen to me, you know? And people go out of their minds about like, and then you keep, you keep, you're on the hedonic treadmill. You just want more and more. It still doesn't make you happy. And I think that Stoicism is just like a circuit breaker in that. It's like- Check yourself. The whole, the whole system is, is at fault. Like you, the, the, the messages, everything was, was wrong. You have to switch it out for something. So that's why I think right now it's really big, you know, and maybe the Roman Empire as well for the, not the Epictetus's.

• 52:24Ryan Holiday?

  What's remarkable about the moment in time we're in right now is that we're, we're experiencing extreme prosperity and technology and all these wonderful things.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:34Ryan Holiday?

  We're freer than I've ever been before in history and have more, and yet also experiencing instability and uncertainty and difficulty and death in the form of a pandemic and wars. And so, and political corruption and chaos and dysfunction. And so you're like, oh, okay, it's, it's never actually going to be normal. It's never actually going to calm. You, you think you, you, you can just have the good things, but bad comes along with the good.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:00Ryan Holiday?

  And that we're all, that this is just fundamentally what everyone has been dealing with for all time. And it turns out that for thousands of years, people have been figuring out strategies for, for how to navigate it.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:11Ryan Holiday?

  There's a story John Adams tells where, you know, there's this poor shoe cobbler in, in Boston, and he takes his shoes. He doesn't always need them to be repaired, but he's taking them to this guy just to be nice. And, you know, he goes and he visits, and there's like 20, you know, this guy's got 10 kids and they're living in this sort of hovel and drops off the shoes. And then a couple of days later, he comes back to pick them up. And as he walks up, he can hear the guy working in there and he's whistling and singing. He was like, he was, he was happy to a degree that Epictetus could not have even imagined, you know? And he's like, how is this possible? Like, he's going as, as I think Epictetus and the Stoics are talking about, you, you, you get so caught up with your

• 53:51Ryan Holiday?

  own problems and, and then you look and you're like, how is that person who has it way worse than me?

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 53:57Ryan Holiday?

  Smiling from ear to ear, loving life, grateful, appreciative. I must be doing something wrong.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:04Ryan Holiday?

  And what Stoicism does is it goes, yeah, here's all the things you're doing wrong. You're focused on what's not in your control. You have too many opinions.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 54:13Ryan Holiday?

  You're, you're not being resilient enough. They walk you through the protocol and they help. Hope you get to where that is.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And then, and then I think what, what really helps me is, is that, that the passions are, are based on faulty judgments, that you basically judge something wrong that, and I love that. And I think that to me is like totally freeing and I apply it every day. Like when, as soon as you're anxious or you're upset about something, it's like you've made a false assumption about, about something. And so go back and figure out what the false assumption is. And, and that actually can really help, help the emotions.

• 54:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's amazing. I thought the book's great. Let's go, let's go watch the book.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Okay, amazing. Yes, yes, please.