The Best Don’t Care About Winning

Ryan talks about how a Stoic thinks about success, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. We've joined Team Feed Corporate to help end hunger in America. No one should go without a meal, yet more than 38 million people in America still face hunger. We created this fundraiser to help provide these much needed meals to our neighbors through the Feeding America network of food banks and we're asking you to join us in our cause. Go to https://dailystoic.com/feeding to donate and let's end hunger together! Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  The best don't care about winning. It's a strange paradox. The people who are most successful in life, who accomplish the most, who dominate their professions, don't care that much about winning. Certainly, they talk about it less. How could that be? It's that they're after something higher than that. They are after what Postidonius, an early Stoic, told the great Roman general Pompey, as I talk about in Lives of the Stoics. Their goal is to be best. Not the best, but best. They're after mastery, self-mastery. They're after maximizing their potential. Marcus Aurelius wasn't measuring his accomplishments as emperor against the great conquerors of the past, although he certainly intended to win the wars

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  he was forced to fight. Instead, his aim was higher. He wanted to be good, to be decent, to be in command of himself, to live up to the man that philosophy tried to make him. Winning is like being rich. It's nice, but it's not something in your control day to day. What is in your control is showing up, giving maximum effort, following your training, sticking to your principles, pursuing your calling. If that translates to on-the-field success, great. In fact, it almost always does. If that translates into career recognition, awesome. And again, it usually does. But sometimes, so does the opposite of those things. And that's why we, as Stoics, hold ourselves to a higher standard.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  We measure ourselves by an internal scorecard. And trusting in that, we know that the rest will take care of itself.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  Daily Stoic is raising money for Feeding America. Last year, the Daily Stoic community came together and raised over $100,000 together, providing more than a million meals. And this year, we're trying to go twice as big. We've donated the first $20,000, and we'd like your help getting to our goal of $200,000, which would provide more than 2 million meals for families across the country. You just have to head over to dailystoic.com/feeding, and together, we can make a small dent in a big problem. We can't alleviate everyone's struggle or suffering, of course, but for the people we can help, the difference is huge. So let's do it. Let's be good Stoics today. Let's fulfill our obligation.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  Just go to dailystoic.com/feeding. Even $1 can provide as many as 10 meals. So head over to dailystoic.com/feeding to help us reach our goal of providing 2 million meals for families across the country.