It’ll Take Some Time | The Stoic Art Of Not Caring What People Think

In 1922, while an unpublished, struggling writer named Ernest Hemingway was covering events in Switzerland, his wife Hadley came from Paris to see him. Assuming he would want them, she packed up the writings Hemingway had accumulated in their apartment–manuscripts, short stories, poetry, and an unfinished novel, it was his life’s work. Hemingway had made some important literary contacts on his trip and she was sure he’d want to show off his work.-And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan outlines the Stoic strategies that you can use in your daily life to stop caring about what other people are thinking. Stoic knows they will be the recipient of unfair criticism. They don’t get distracted by it or make impotent threats. They certainly don’t take it personally either (In fact, Epictetus liked to joke that when someone unfairly criticizes you, feel grateful that they didn’t point out your real flaws). No, they didn’t do any of that. Because they knew that trying to control other people’s opinions was like trying to control the weather—and that a public life guarantees public scrutiny. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas and how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  It'll take some time. In 1922, while an unpublished struggling writer named Ernest Hemingway was covering events in Switzerland, his wife Hadley came from Paris to see him. Assuming he would want them, she packed up the writings Hemingway had accumulated in their apartment: manuscripts, and short stories, and poetry, and an unfinished novel. Hemingway had made some important literary contacts on this trip, and she figured he intended to show off his work. As she waited during a stopover at a French train station, Hadley stepped out for a drink and a newspaper, only to find on her return that the bag containing all of Hemingway's manuscripts had been stolen. It was an enormous, nearly unbearable

• 1:08Ryan Holiday?

  loss. Years of hard work had disappeared in an instant, impossible to recover. Of course, you know the end of Hemingway's story, and can probably guess how this obstacle contributed to it. Hemingway would go on to be one of the greatest writers of his generation. The loss of his back catalogue forced him to start fresh, partly driving him to reinvent his literary style. "The impediment to action advances action," Marx really wrote, "what stands in the way becomes the way." It was precisely that. But, you know, it wasn't that immediately. "I suppose you heard of the loss of my juvenilia," Hemingway said. "You naturally would say good, etc., but don't say it to me. I ain't yet reached

• 1:50Ryan Holiday?

  that mood. I worked three years on the damn stuff." It is a certifiable fact that most of what we despair over and resist turns out to be good for us. We change because of it, respond to it. That's what Stoicism is all about. Still, that doesn't change the heartbreak. It doesn't change the moment. It takes time. We have to be patient with ourselves, with others in similar situations. Let our mood come around to it. Let our perspective shift. Let more information come in. We also have to make it good, as Hemingway did, and that took time and effort and lots and lots of writing.

• 2:28Ryan Holiday?

  So it does for you.

• 2:33Ryan Holiday?

  You can't waste your time thinking about what other people are doing or saying, Marcus really says in meditation, unless of course it impacts the common good. He's saying, because when you're focused on what other people are thinking, what other people are doing, you're neglecting is what you're thinking, what you're doing, what's going on in here, which is the one thing that you actually have some control over. And this is a critical Stoic lesson. You focus on what we control so we can make a difference there. One of the main things we don't control, what the Stoics talk about a lot, is what other people think and say about us. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've not only written all these books about Stoic philosophy, I've been lucky enough to talk about it, the NBA and the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leaders. And it's key that we learn how to not care what other people say and think. We can imagine Marcus really has his share of critics.

• 3:17Ryan Holiday?

  He also has the people who his approval he craves. He says to himself tranquility comes when you stop caring what other people say and think and care only about what you do and say and think. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the Stoic art of not caring what other people think.

• 3:37Ryan Holiday?

  We don't compare ourselves to others because we don't control other people. The Stoics say it's what's in your control versus what's outside of your control. What's inside your control is the work that you do, the situations that you're in. And when you start to say, oh, but that person has more than me, or why do they have that? Now you're getting into envy and jealousy. You're stealing joy and happiness from yourself. Marcus really says that happiness is about tying yourself to what you do and say, not what other people do and say.

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  Stoics have this word euthymia, which means tranquility. And Seneca says, well, what is that tranquility? How does one get it? It's not you retreat to the mountains or a monastery or some beautiful resort. He says euthymia in the course of life has to come from something else. He defines this euthymia as, he says, a sense of the path that you're on without being distracted by the paths that crisscross.

• 4:37Ryan Holiday?

  Even from those, especially from those who are hopelessly lost. So you think about the interchanges and the connections. You think about all the other companies doing what you do, going in similar directions. Think about what's happening in the industry, in the world. It's very easy to get distracted, right? When I was at American Apparel, I watched Dove destroy a billion-dollar company because instead of doing what he did well, what the company was meant to do, he started doing what Forever 21 was doing, and Urban Outfitters was doing, and H&M was doing. He lacked the discipline to stay on his path. He got distracted by the paths of those who crisscrossed him, even when some of those companies ultimately also were headed towards bankruptcy or having to reinvent themselves.

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  So it takes a lot of discipline to know what you do, right? What makes you great? What your principles are? What your place in the market is? And to stay on that and to not get distracted, right? To not get distracted by every shiny other thing. And so euphemia is not just a recipe for personal happiness, tranquility, but it's also a recipe for success, right? Staying in your lane, staying on your tracks, doing what you set out to do if you're into your strategic plan, your mission, your principles. This takes an enormous amount of discipline.

• 5:58Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus said that we have to put every impression to the test. Your therapist might say, you have to ask yourself, is this assumption true, right? Because the reality is, a lot of what we implicitly or instantly believe in a situation is preposterous. Sometimes we're telling ourselves that people don't like us, but if we actually look at their behavior, they actually do like us. Or if we actually ask them, they would say that they do, right? We make these assumptions, and these assumptions, it turns out, are not really based on anything. So we have to put that impression up to the test. We have to ask ourselves, is this actually true? Why do I believe it? What evidence do I have for it? And this should help us from falling prey to false impressions, false beliefs, false assumptions. Let's go to what's true, not what our mind made up in a moment of weakness, or doubt, or confusion.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  I moved to New Orleans more than 10 years ago. I lived in this little apartment building. And one of the things I did when I moved here was I didn't tell a single person that I was writing a book for two Stoic reasons. Number one, I found out afterwards that a bunch of my friends here thought that I just didn't have a job. They thought I was basically just a bum. They had no idea I was working on a book, which is an important Stoic concept. Epictetus says, "If you wish to improve, if you wish to become good at something, you must be content to be seen as stupid or foolish." I didn't care what anyone thought about me. I knew the work that I was doing. I knew that it would pay off eventually. And when the announcement came out, everyone was surprised. Oh, Ryan was working on something. He wasn't just hanging out in his apartment. And then number two, a Stoic doesn't talk about it. A Stoic is about it. I've always believed that talking about what you're doing and doing it, fight for the same resources.

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  So I didn't want to get credit for writing a book. I didn't want people to ask me about the book. I didn't want validation for the book. I wanted to spend every day actually working on the project. That's what paid off. That's what put me on the track that I eventually got on. That's why I never talk about what I'm doing until after I've done it. And you probably shouldn't either.

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  In one of the greatest essays ever written, I think one of her most Stoic pieces of writing, the novelist Joan Didion, this is actually her table. I'm sitting in a chair that was once in her house. She said that self-respect frees us from the expectations of others. She says it gives us back to ourselves. And that that's the great singular power of self-respect. You realize that respect isn't something you get from other people. Respect comes from in here, right? And by respecting oneself, holding oneself to a certain standard, having a certain character, knowing one's worth and value, what you will do, what you won't do. From this emanates a kind of confidence that makes one worthy of respect. The Stoics have this great concept.

• 8:34Ryan Holiday?

  It's actually in a play about Cato. His founding fathers were fond of it. They were saying, "Nothing can guarantee you success, but there's something better still that's deserving it, being worthy of it." And I think that's the idea. Having respect of other people is great. Obviously, Cato appreciated the fact that people saw him as Cato. But what mattered was that he was actually worthy of it, that he lived a life, that he was a person worthy of that success. And that starts from how he saw himself. That starts from the character that he cultivated. And the same is true for us.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  If good work comes from being present, it's preventing your ability from like actually being great on the television show that you're on. You're spending energy out in the world on stuff that doesn't matter instead of being like, "I'm gonna be the best that I can be in the thing that I am."

• 9:22Speaker 01

  100%. If you are constantly dwelling on other people's opinions, if you're constantly dwelling on other people's success, it will 100% diminish your capability of doing good work. Just no if, ands, or buts about it. Because the mind has a certain amount of bandwidth. And the way I always express this, when I talk to people about it, I go, "Look at it like a number. If you had 100 bandwidth, like if your bandwidth was 100, and then someone said something mean to you on Twitter, and you read that and responded, and you're going back and forth, now how much do you have? I bet you got about 30 is gone, 30% is just dedicated to this thing. It might be 40. Now, whatever work you are actually trying to do is greatly diminished because you don't have the focus."

• 10:10Ryan Holiday?

  When you find yourself being criticized by someone, Marcus really says, "You have to get inside of them. Look in their soul. Look at what kind of person they are," he says. "And then you'll find you won't strain to impress them so much." Right? It's like that line in Fight Club about how we spend all our time and energy trying to impress people who we don't even like, who we don't even respect. It's kind of insane if you think about it. So when you think about the approval of the people that you are craving, that you are chasing, you realize who they are, you realize what they actually value, you realize how wrong they are all the time. It discounts the amount of energy and focus you're gonna spend on trying to make them like... His point was that we too often accept the disapproval of, say, a hater without actually seeing who this hater is. What have they ever actually done? Right? Do they have any real expertise here at all?

• 10:55Ryan Holiday?

  Do they know what we're trying to do? Right? They're judging us for a mistake that we made, for a weakness that we have, but maybe their weaknesses are way worse. Right? That's a very silly way to do it. So you have to look at this person whose approval you want. You feel like you're no good because you didn't go to Harvard. Look at the people who have gone to Harvard, right? Look at the people who have not gone to Harvard. Does this actually say anything about you? Look at the problems, the mistakes that institution had made, and is it really that important for it to reflect on you?

• 11:25Ryan Holiday?

  Zeno is the founder of Stoicism. He had this social anxiety. Someone had said he was sort of stubby, he had weird legs, kind of a weird appearance. And he had this mentor, this philosopher mentor named Kritis. And Kritis realized that Zeno was too self-conscious. He cared too much about what other people thought about him. And he thought people were looking at him all the time. So he sent, he asked him to carry this large cauldron of soup across town. And he knew that Zeno would be mortified at the idea. So he caught Zeno kind of like trying to sneak around, take it on these back roads, or do it at night. So Kritis was following him. And right as he was in front of some people, he hit the pot with his staff and it spilled the soup all over Zeno. And of course, Zeno was all embarrassed and he ran off. And he said, "You know, where are you going, my friend?

• 12:09Ryan Holiday?

  Don't you realize nothing has happened to you?" And his point was that no harm has actually befallen you just because some people are looking askew at you, or, you know, none of these people know who you are, they don't care, they're immediately going to forget this event. So I think what the Stoics realize is that, one, naturally we're self-conscious. So they're not denying that you care what other people think, or how you're being seen. But they actively practiced not being shamed by these things. Cato, for instance, would walk around bareheaded, he would walk around barefooted, he wore ratty clothes, even though he could afford the finest garments. And he did this because he was trying to make himself immune, he was trying to inoculate himself against caring about what other people think.

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  And so I think the real benefit of that, if you look at Cato's life, is that towards the end, when everyone was so afraid of Julius Caesar, when everyone was going along with what Julius Caesar wanted to do, Cato was the one who was comfortable standing alone. He was the comfortable being the odd man out. He was comfortable, you know, people being mad at him and saying, "Why can't you go along to get along? Why are you being like this? Why are you being such an asshole?" He had the strength and the confidence to do the right thing when everyone else was afraid, because he'd actively practiced not caring so much about what other people think. So, look, I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying I don't catch myself doing it too, but it's something you work on and you get better at. And so it's important to realize that Stoicism then is a practice, it's a process, it's not just a bunch of ideas.

• 13:38Ryan Holiday?

  It's something you engage in, the way that Kritis was for Zeno, and of course, the way that Cato was in his philosophical practice as well.

• 13:50Ryan Holiday?

  It's strange, we not only care about other people's opinions, we care about the opinions of people in the future who we will never meet, who will be dead before or ever walk this earth. Marcus really says, you know, people who long for posthumous fame, they forget not only are they not going to be around to enjoy it, but the people in the future will be just as dumb and silly and ridiculous and obsessed with fads and valuing the wrong things as people right now. So what matters is what you think. He says, "We love ourselves more than other people, but we care about their opinion more than our own." It's insane. You know what's right. You know what you value. You know what's important. You know what your principles are. That's what you have to measure yourself against. What you're capable of, what you're trying to do. External approval, external validation, external results,

• 14:35Ryan Holiday?

  that's secondary. How many views this does, that's not important. Did I say what I wanted to say? Did I do what I wanted to do? Did I bring my best self to it? That's what matters.

• 14:48Ryan Holiday?

  It's one of the most frustrating things in the entire world. You do the right thing, you treat people well, you hold yourself to a certain high standards, and then what happens? People talk shit about you. People steal from you. People screw you over. That's how it goes. Kipling says, "Can you bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools?" Marcus really says, "They'll cut you with knives, they'll stab you in the back, they'll shower you with curses, they'll argue in bad faith." But then he says, "But what? Does that cut your mind off from clearness and sanity and self-control and justice?" No. To the Stoics, it doesn't matter what other people do. It doesn't matter if you're not recognized and rewarded for doing the right thing. You stay on the path that you know is true and good.

• 15:32Ryan Holiday?

  You stay true and good anyway, because to betray it is to add insult on top of injury.

• 15:41Ryan Holiday?

  When someone criticizes me, I do this exercise from Marcus Aurelius that says, "Think about this person. Think about what they just submitted to. Think about who they are. Think about what they're addicted to. Think about what they've ever accomplished." And what you realize is that this person, whose opinion you are about to let supersede your own evaluation of yourself and your work, is actually worse than meaningless. They're like the opposite of who you're trying to be. So it's good that they don't like what you're doing. You don't want their approval. Focus on what you think. Focus on who you want to be. As he says, "We love ourselves more than other people, but then for some reason, we care about other people's opinions more than our own." That's insanity. You've got to focus on who you are, on your own internal scorecard, on your sense of self.

• 16:25Ryan Holiday?

  That's what you measure yourself against, not the nonsense of other people, not the worthless opinions. These people who, quite frankly, you don't respect anyway.

• 16:34Ryan Holiday?

  If you want more wisdom inspired from the Stoics, I send out one Stoic-themed email every single morning, totally for free. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. No spam. You can unsubscribe at any time. I think it's the best thing that I do. It's a community of hundreds of thousands of Stoics all over the world. We'd love to have you at dailystoic.com/email.