Oh, You’re Free, Are You? | Only Fools Rush In

We are prickly about our freedom…as we willingly submit to all sorts of addictions. 📚 Books Mentioned: Zero to One by Peter Thiel https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/zero-to-one-notes-on-startups-or-how-to-build-the-future?_pos=1&_sid=7b492c308&_ss=r Lives of the Stoics https://store.dailystoic.com/products/lives-of-the-stoics-signed-edition by Ryan Holiday Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/business5?_pos=2&_sid=03217af8d&_ss=r The Daily Stoic https://store.dailystoic.com/products/the-daily-stoic-leatherbound-signed-edition by Ryan Holiday 🎟️DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos| Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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?

  Oh, you're free, are you? We bristle at the thought. We push back at the first sign of being controlled or coerced. No one gets to tell us what to do. We have rights. We have protections. It's our life. Americans especially, but people all over the world are protective of their freedoms. That's a good thing. Citizens should be diligent. But there is a part of these protests that call to mind a story that Seneca tells us about a condemned criminal begging for their life to be spared. "Oh," the emperor said, "you call this being alive? We're prickly about our freedom as we willingly submit to all sorts of addictions. You are enslaved to your phone.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  You spend every waking second thinking about work. You can't go a night without drink. You can't stop racking up credit card debt. You need to be liked by everyone. No one enslaved you. You enslaved yourself. So how free are you really?"

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  Only fools rush in. "A good person is invincible," Epictetus says in Discourses 3:6, "for they don't rush into contests in which they aren't the strongest. If you want their property, take it. Take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they should avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible?" And then the entry is, "One of the most fundamental principles of martial arts is that strength should not go against strength. That is, don't try to beat your opponent where they are strongest.

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  But for some reason, that's exactly what we try to do when we undertake some impossible task we haven't bothered to think through, or we let someone put us on the spot, or we say yes to whatever comes our way." Some people think that choosing your battles is weak or calculating. But how could reducing the amount of times we fail or minimize the needless injuries inflicted on us be weak? How is that a bad thing? As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor. Stoics call it reasoned choice. That means be reasonable. Think hard before choosing and make yourself unbeatable. A book I've recommended many, many times, I sell it here at the Painted Porch, is Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel says, "The whole point of business in life is to find where you have a monopoly, where you're the only one doing that thing."

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  There's another book that I rave about that we carry here in the store called Blue Ocean Strategy. There's another one called Blue Ocean Shift that actually did the marketing for it. But the idea is, red oceans is where there's lots of competition. That means being like everyone else, wanting the things that everyone wants, focusing on what's out of your control like everyone else. It's a far better thing to focus on what is in your control, on being you and your unique self. And the Stoics actually have a lot about this, right? Agrippinus, we talk about in Lives of the Stoics, he says, "I want to be the red thread in the sweater, not like the other threads. I want to stand up." And that's the idea. Epictetus says, "Walk alone," right? "Look around you. Be who you are."

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  To me, what he's saying is that when you try to be like someone else, you lose. When you want the things that other people want, you lose. When you enter something where you are trying to be like someone or something that you're not supposed to be, you lose. But when you are yourself, when you stand for what you stand for, when you do what you know is right, that's when you win, even if you quote unquote, "lose." There's an interview I was reading with the architect Frank Gehry, and he would, he would say, when he was talking to architects who were just starting out, he'd get them to all get out a piece of paper. And he would say, "Write your signature on this paper." And then he'd spread them out and have the whole class looking at them.

• 4:22Ryan Holiday?

  And he'd say, "They all look different. That's you. That's you. So stay with that forever." And I think that's what Epictetus is saying here. You are a unique person. You have a totally unique set of DNA and experiences and values, and you are that red thread. So don't make yourself like the others. Don't sell out, right? When you are, when you stick to who you are, when you're true to that, you win no matter what. You have a monopoly on you. Don't give that monopoly away. Don't forfeit it. Don't lose it. Another rendering of that Epictetus quote, he says,

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  "You can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you." When your focus is, Mark Cirelli says, on what other people say or do, on getting approval, on having certain gatekeepers accept you or open things up to you, well, that's when you have set yourself up to be defeated. And even if you win, you've still lost in some sense that you've given up something that was uniquely you and uniquely yours. I think that's a shame. And so that's what I want to leave you there. Stick with what's up to you. Stick with who you are. Go where you have that monopoly. Competition is for losers, as Peter Thiel said. So go where you're a winner.