Winning Is A Muscle. Build It. | WNBA Legend Candace Parker

If there’s one thing Candace Parker does best, it’s winning. In today’s episode, Ryan sits down with basketball legend Candace Parker to talk about championships, pressure, and what it takes to be one of the greats. Candace talks about how being elite changes the way you see the world (and yourself), why winning never really feels like enough, and what happens when your whole identity is built around being the best. She opens up about legacy, ambition, parenting, and why she doesn’t go a year without reading The Alchemist https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/rhmoo6?_pos=1&_sid=4ecdbd30a&_ss=r. Candace Parker is one of the most influential athletes of all time. After being selected as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 WNBA Draft by the Los Angeles Sparks, following a champion career at Tennessee, Parker went on to become the first player to earn WNBA MVP and Rookie of the Year honors in the same season, win three WNBA championship titles, and take home two Olympic gold medals. Be sure to grab a copy of Candace’s book: The Can-Do Mindset: How to Cultivate Resilience, Follow Your Heart, and Fight for Your Passions https://www.amazon.com/Can-Do-Mindset-Cultivate-Resilience-Passions/dp/1638932182 Follow Candace on Instagram and X @CandaceParker https://www.instagram.com/candaceparker 📚 Books Mentioned: The Can-Do Mindset: How to Cultivate Resilience, Follow Your Heart, and Fight for Your Passions https://www.amazon.com/Can-Do-Mindset-Cultivate-Resilience-Passions/dp/1638932182 by Candace Parker Courage is Calling https://store.dailystoic.com/products/courage-is-calling-signed-edition-pre-order by Ryan Holiday The Alchemist https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/rhmoo6?_pos=1&_sid=4ecdbd30a&_ss=r by Paulo CoelhoFranklin and Winston https://www.amazon.com/Franklin-Winston-Intimate-Portrait-Friendship/dp/0812972821 by Jon MeachamClementine: The Life of Mrs. Churchill https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/biography7 by Sonia PurnellWhat You’re Made For https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/what-youre-made-for-powerful-life-lessons-from-my-career-in-sports?_pos=1&_sid=43622874f&_ss=r by George RavelingThe Barn https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-barn-the-secret-history-of-a-murder-in-mississippi?_pos=3&_sid=29ed2ace4&_ss=r by Wright ThompsonRace Against Time https://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-Time-Reporter-Unsolved/dp/1451645139 by Jerry MitchellTaylor Branch Trilogy https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. I was thinking about this yesterday, like, the decision to be great at something, that is a choice, right? You can be good at what you do or bad at what you do. You can decide, hey, I'm going to take this as far as it can be taken, or as far as I'm capable of taking it. That's the choice to be great, to not be average or mediocre. But I don't know if you get to choose what you're great at. I don't want to be too mystical about it, but I think, you know, what we get called to do is a confluence of circumstances.

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's a confluence of natural abilities, size, when you're born, where you're born, et cetera. And then I think there is something spiritual or mystical about it. Why is this what lights you up and that's what lights me up? And there is something, I think, a little bit unfair about this, right? I think about this with my friend Paul Rabel, who I did a book with a few years ago called The Way of the Champion. He is arguably the greatest lacrosse player of all time and was great from a very young age. Well, he chose to be great at it. He talked about how one of the things he learned from his coaches was you do 100 shots a day. If you do 100 shots a day, every day, eventually you'll become great at whatever it is that you do.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  But there was a ceiling and there is, remains a ceiling on lacrosse. It's popular collegiate game, even though it's one of the oldest sports in American history. When he gets drafted to play professional lacrosse, like it is a fringe sport, to say the least. The athletes make, you know, like 20 or 30,000 dollars a year. And even though he's LeBron James level good, it's just not in the cards to, to make, I don't know, NBA money. It, it's funny, actually Bill Belichick reaches out to him at some point. Bill, Bill Belichick being a huge fan of lacrosse and he tries to recruit him to be an NFL tight end, which he does end up successfully doing with a few athletes. But at some point, even Belichick goes, you know what? I think you have a chance to be the greatest lacrosse player ever.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  You, you gotta do that. You could be a really good NFL tight end and make millions of dollars, but like you have a chance to be truly great at this thing. And I sometimes think about that for WNBA players, although the game is changing a lot. These women are such incredibly talented athletes, but currently for a bunch of reasons that make sense and don't make sense. The athletes don't make very much money and they don't have huge audiences. And the sport is still, you know, probably in its early days, just, just as other sports were in their early days, when some of the greatest athletes of all time were playing them, you know? Jim Thorpe is an amazing football player, but now mediocre players, bench players make more than he probably ever made

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  in his career. That's sort of something I've been thinking about. Like I think about this with myself, like I write about stoicism. If I wrote about habits or if I wrote about sales, maybe my books would sell more copies. Maybe I'd get more speaking gigs. Maybe if I wrote romance novels, it'd be bigger. Now you might say, oh, why don't you just switch to that? But that's not what lights me up. That's not what gets me excited. That's not what my expertise is in. And so this is what I mean. We don't fully get to choose, but we do choose once we're called to something, how good we're going to be at. That because you know, this idea of being great at what you do and then seriously underpaid, this is obviously something this might seem, oh, that's not very relatable.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, it's super relatable. How the best middle school teacher in California fits in that bucket. I don't know, someone great at hunting. I think about the women who worked at the daycare I used to send my son to, who managed to put 30 toddlers down for a nap in the middle of the day at the same time, when I could barely do one. There's so many people who are just utterly amazing at what they do. The best tour guide in the world, the best expert on this or that obscure topic or thing, you know, by definition of its specificity, it's not going to be known or necessarily valuable to an enormous

• 5:12Ryan Holiday?

  audience. And then other, other people decide to be selfless. I just had in my office, sitting down and chatting, a lawyer for the Innocence Project. He's an incredible lawyer who's decided to be great at that thing, which is getting innocent people off death row. Those aren't going to be the most lucrative clients. You could say, oh, you could choose a different area of law to work in. I don't know if you can. Don't know if you can be as great if you choose to be something other than what you were meant to be great at. Nick Saban had a book about this, How Good Do You Want to Be? And I think that's really the question. Not what do you want to be good at? How good are you going to be? And I was very excited to talk to today's guest. Candace Parker is one of the greatest basketball

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  players of all time. She also happens to be one of the greatest female basketball players of all time. She played for the University of Tennessee under Pat Summitt, where they won two NCAA championships in 2007 and 2008. She was drafted number one overall in 2008. She won the Rookie of the Year and the MVP in her first season. She's won two gold medals and her jersey is being retired this year by two separate teams. That is just an incredible run. But again, there are NBA players that you've probably never heard of that made more money in their careers than she did. There may even be professional basketball players playing overseas that make more money. Is that fair? I don't know if fair is the right word. It's just what it is.

• 6:41Ryan Holiday?

  And we have to figure out when we're called to do something, are we going to pursue that? Are we going to let certain things get in our way? I think that fits actually with Candace's favorite book, which we talk about quite a bit in today's episode, The Alchemist. You know, are you going to go for the thing that you were meant for? Are you going to put up with the costs and the deterrence and the doubters? And the self doubt? Are you going to push through that? That's the question. Are you going to be great? Candace has an amazing book where she talks about all this. It's called The Can Do Mindset. How to Cultivate Resilience, Follow Your Heart and Fight for Your Passions. She is a television broadcaster. I've seen her many times on TV with my friend, Adam Lefkoe. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter, at Candace Parker.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  You can see her as an analyst and commentator for TNT Sports. She covers NBA games and college basketball games. She's just great at what she does. She's also a parent. We talk about that quite a bit in today's episode. I really enjoyed this conversation. And then we followed up. We've just been texting book recommendations back and forth. I think she's awesome. I really liked this interview. And I think I want to do an article about this idea. This idea that we don't get to choose what we're great at, but we do choose whether we're going to be great. Because that's been helpful. It's been helpful for me. That's certainly been my philosophy.

• 8:02Ryan Holiday?

  How are you?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  I'm good. Nice to officially meet you.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, we have a mutual friend in Adam Lefkoe.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yes, I love Lefkoe, man. That's my guy.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  He's the best.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Doing it big in France.

• 8:13Ryan Holiday?

  I sent him a picture the other day. I was, I was on a plane and he was just on TV on someone's screen. And I was like, it's so, to watch him go from the Bleacher Report days to where he is now, it's been so cool.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. It's been really cool to be his teammate, too, throughout that process. Like, it's been so fun to be on the show with him. And, you know, that's my buddy.

• 8:31Ryan Holiday?

  It must be interesting as an athlete. Yeah, you refer to it as a team. You probably just sort of instinctively think about everything as a team sport and, and go to wanting to be on good teams.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy. I think the more you, like, when you're on teams and you're competing and there's like this like objective goal as opposed to like subject, you know, like.

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  A lot of times in business, it's like, okay, we're trying to like get there, but really it's just those like. Daily homework assignments and like all that stuff. But whereas like, you know, in practice, you're on the white team, you're on the black team. Your team wins, your team loses, you know, type of thing. Do you realize like the good people that you want to be around like? No matter what are passionate and care and like the same human. And I don't know, I consider Turner the best team I've ever been on, honestly. Like just in terms of like the empowerment and the love and just being genuine and calling each other out, but still loving hard and like, I love it.

• 9:28Ryan Holiday?

  There is something binary about sports that the rest of us in the regular world don't get to experience. Is that hard to turn off? Like, yeah, in practice, you either win the scrimmage or you don't. The game, you win the game or don't. Your season is a winning season or it isn't. It's all down to percentages and numbers. But the, the rest of life is not quite so neat and clean.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  That's the hardest thing because in those wins and losses and like definite wins and losses, I think you learn more about yourself and you can't glaze over like whatever happened. You have to address it. Whereas I think in the real world, you can like lie to yourself more and say that you didn't lose.

• 10:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  You know, and so I think it is hard to like be a team with people that haven't experienced that. Because I think half of the battle is like what we tell ourselves, like lying to ourselves and telling us, we worked really hard on that and they just didn't like it. And it's like, no, it really didn't like, you know, type of thing. So.

• 10:31Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  The numbers don't lie in the way that we can lie to ourselves to rationalize or make excuses for anything.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And sports, there's no, there's really no excuses. Like you can't, I mean, if you're going to make excuses, you're going to be without a job pretty quickly.

• 10:48Ryan Holiday?

  But what about with the book? Like you're not going to tell yourself, and it's great, by the way, you're not going to tell yourself that this book is only a success if it sells the most copies of any other book, right? I mean, like there's a whole bunch of different ways that you can evaluate whether something succeeded or failed.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. But I think when you're working in a team setting with a concrete. Goal in mind, like it's not a success unless I finished it, or if I completed it, or if I put the time in. So I think you're right. It's not necessarily measured off of like wins and losses. But sometimes when you're working with somebody or you're working on a team and you've never experienced that, you're never going to experience it if you don't make it about that. If that makes sense, do you know what I mean? Like, yes, I believe in what Yanis is saying at the end of the season. Not every season's a failure a hundred percent. But if you never win in your whole entire career, like I don't know if that was success.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe you had success, but I don't know if that was what the whole objective of every single game is, is to win.

• 11:53Ryan Holiday?

  Well, also, if your numbers aren't good, they're not going to let you stay on the court very long. And if the team sucks, they're going to find a new team, right? And so I mean, I think about that with my books. Like I don't judge the success or failures of my books on whether I sold the most or even how they're doing week in and week out, because it's a longer game than that. At the same time, if you sell zero copies, that says something also, right? It says quite a bit. And if you don't sell enough copies, they won't let you do another one. And people are only going to humor you and your rationalizations for so long. So it's like, it's a factor, but it's not the only factor.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  It's kind of like within music. You know how Jay-Z talks about how he like dumbed down for his audience to double his dollars? Where he like went mainstream to then really be bring people in to be able to like, do what he really wants. I think sometimes you got to play the game and sometimes it is a numbers game. It is about winning to get the credibility to really do what you want to do.

• 12:51Ryan Holiday?

  And you got to get to a place of financial freedom so you can make more creatively free decisions. You know, like the starving artist has a lot of freedom, I guess, but not a lot of audience. And then the person who only does what the audience wants, doesn't have a lot of creative freedom. Because you don't own the fans, the fans own you. It's probably somewhere in the middle. You want to be able to play the game the way you want to play it. And at the same time, half people in the stands.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  No, 100%. And I think it's a, it's an art. I've been on both sides of that where, you know, screw everybody. And then it's been like, okay, I care about what everybody's, you know,

• 13:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  thinking or saying. So it's a balance.

• 13:32Ryan Holiday?

  I liked your point, though, about like, the win is finishing it. You sort of, you have to create wins along the way that are measurable. There's, there's actually a line from one of the Stoics, his name is Epictetus. And he said, you know, you can always win if you only enter races in which winning is up to you. And his point was when you sort of define what victory is, then, you know, the refs don't get to decide, the fans don't get to decide, you know, if you're, if you're trying to do something unique or special or something that only you can do, then you get to decide. And yeah, I think about it like in a book is, is it the best I was capable of? Is it what I was uniquely setting out to do? Did I finish

• 14:13Ryan Holiday?

  it? All those are metrics. And I want to chalk up as many wins as I can until it comes out. And then, then there is this other victory, which is, you know, how did it do? That can't be the only victory, but it's gotta be one of them.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it's hard to like, turn that off when you are competitive. I mean, you want it to be all of those things. And so, I mean, one of my favorite artists ever just came out with a, with a soundtrack, Lil Wayne. And I haven't listened to it yet, but I haven't had heard great reviews about it, which I usually like to listen to the album before I get the opinion. And it's, it's hard balance in this world now because people can sway just off of social media, what you truly like.

• 15:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  And so you can't make it for that. But it also is sometimes you only get like one swing. Like it is sometimes you only get one time. And especially like women's sports, sometimes you do get one big stage. And if you don't captivate, then, you know, that's kind of, you're gonna have to wait a really long time to be able to do it again.

• 15:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. When I'm thinking about my career, I sometimes think about it, the metaphor of like, I just want to be in the league. How long can I be in the league? Can I be one of the people doing it? And then there's a certain amount of stuff that's outside your control, right? You don't control what other players the GM puts around you. You don't control who's having a great season on another team. You don't control the refs. You don't control if you get injured. But you sort of do control whether you are yourself playing at a caliber that's worthy of being, you know, of the couple hundred men or women in the game. That that part's up to you.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And I like that. I like the like, just being in the game. There are a lot of ifs throughout my entire career. You know, you try to put yourself in other people's shoes and like, you know, the saying of in kindergarten, keep your eyes on your own paper.

• 16:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  I mean, you got to keep your eyes on your own journey because you'll, you'll drive yourself crazy with that. You know, somebody else's tools or that they were equipped with or their upbringing or what they had from the start. But you don't know like all the other things that they're battling through. And so, you know, it is, it is difficult to not, you know, look at, okay, well, if I would have had, you know, a general manager, if I would have had this coach or an organization or whatever. So it's cliche, but you, you know, you play the hands you're dealt and

• 16:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  you do it to the best of your ability. I think we drive ourselves crazy in society if we were all trying to figure out what everybody else had.

• 16:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and sometimes you think you want what someone else has. But if you actually could experience what it was like to be them, maybe you would. I mean, I'm sure you've met, like, you're obviously a very competitive person. And then sometimes you meet someone and you're just like, I'm glad I'm not that competitive. That seems like a, that seems like a curse you would put on someone.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  I'm like psycho, but I realize like I watched The Last Dance.

• 17:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Like I idolized Jordan growing up, being from Naperville, Illinois.

• 17:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  You know, I was growing up in the 90s when it was like they won six championships and but then after watching The Last Dance, it was like, he has to go home with himself every single day and be all of these other things that aren't trying to win a championship. Like he has to be a father, a husband, like friend, like all of these things. And so I can't speak because I don't know him on a personal level, but I know that would be really difficult to turn off, you know, that level of competitiveness, back against the wall, like almost making up stuff to put yourself in a place of wanting to demolish or destroy.

• 17:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  That has to be really hard from a human standpoint.

• 18:04Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. Yeah. Wright Thompson, the sports writer, has a piece, I think it was in ESPN. It was like Michael Jordan at 50 and it's a profile of Jordan on his like 50th birthday. And there's this scene in it where Michael Jordan's like, you know, you have this one thing, like your, your competitive drive to win. And he's like, that's what makes you great. But then you can't, exactly as you said, you can't turn it off. And also it's still manifesting itself in every aspect of your life. So you'd think, hey, this guy owns a basketball team. He's living the dream, but the basketball team sucks. So he's miserable, right? Like, like he gets to golf all day in the best golf courses in the world, but he has to like stomp on the throats

• 18:47Ryan Holiday?

  of his opponents, you know, like he, he has this superpower, which is his, his desire to win. And as long as that was matched up with being on the Bulls, it was, you know, decent, a decent existence, but it's probably somewhat torturous when you're, when you're not on the Bulls. I mean, I've watched his, uh, his Hall of Fame speech and you're just like, oof, you can't even enjoy this moment. He invited the guy who made the high school basketball team over him so he could dunk on that guy at his penultimate moment of his life. I mean, that, that's like a Greek tragedy right there.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  But it's crazy because he's still the GOAT. So it's like one of those things where if that was what he wanted. Everyone loves him. You see kids now that weren't even a thought when he was playing basketball that are know that that's Michael Jordan. He's completely transformed shoes and I mean billionaire status as an athlete. Like it's crazy. The saying that always comes back to me is like, if you can't enjoy your cup of coffee in the morning, then like you can't enjoy anything big. Yes, yes. And I think that there still has to be joy in those moments. And I think that's my takeaway is is like, for a long time, I thought that the next bet like, okay, I'm gonna win the, okay.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  And so, okay, I'm gonna, and I didn't really stop to enjoy those moments. And I feel like when I started really like enjoying waking up and having the slow mornings and really enjoying like just sitting around the dinner table, that's when those moments got better. Yeah. You know, I really could take in what just happened. And I think as athletes, like we're literally taught to be machines of like, keep the main thing, the main thing. You are literally trying to go out there and just score more points than the other team. And now you're doing all of these things that you've always dreamed of, but it's still not enough because you're a machine. So I think there's a gift and a curse because the greats usually, Kobe was crazy.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Like, I remember, I mean KG was crazy. I remember my ex-husband played for the Celtics and Kevin Garnett was behind us on the bus. Doc Rivers was big on having the family around and stuff. So we could ride the bus, we could ride the plane back, whatever. And KG was back there talking himself through the whole game. Yeah. Staring straight on the bus, stupid, you should have, you should have went left. Like, you, you didn't go right. Like pump fake, stupid. Like just going in on play by play for the game. Like it was crazy. So you have to have a level of craziness to be as great. But then there's very few people that have the balance to be able to accomplish that, but also be the human level. Of understanding like.

• 21:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's like, can you keep it on a leash or can you get it under control? That's like, that's actually maybe the, the, the ultimate superpower. Cause yeah, you're not going to win if you're, if you're not competitive, if you're not driven, if you're not intent on being the best. And yet if you turn those up to a degree, you'll never be able to enjoy those things. And so when you find someone who's really good at what they do and they're not a machine or they're not a monster, you know, like that's the latter part is how many great artists and actors and entrepreneurs were like, were monsters too. There's a term, the art monsters, right? Like they've got these secret demons and they can't turn them off. And so when you meet someone who's, who's extremely accomplished and then seems to have

• 22:21Ryan Holiday?

  a good handle on themselves, it's like, you're like, oh, that's actually even rarer. Like I was, I was having lunch one day with Manu Ginobili and I was like, man, it just hit me like, this dude's got four rings. He's got an Olympic gold medal and he's like, not vibrating with intensity and meanness. You know, like clearly you don't, you don't accomplish what he's accomplished if you're not deeply passionate in all of these things. And look, I don't know him to the, I'm not married to him. Maybe he's, he's actually a horrible to live with. But the point is when you see someone who manages to sort of have that, that bigger package, which is like, uh, family life and balance, and they can appreciate what they've achieved.

• 23:05Ryan Holiday?

  It's not all discarded in pursuit of more and more and more. You go, that's who I want to be like, that's a, that's the harder victory.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  The balance of it, like you said, there's very few people that can, just like, you know, I was reading a book and it was talking about like, when is enough enough? And you don't usually know what enough is until you.

• 23:26Ryan Holiday?

  Well past.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Until it's enough, until it's well past enough. It speaks to the society we live in of always moving the goalposts of always wanting more. It's the gift and the curse. I mean, you look at what we thought athletes were supposed to be and the old school coaches of the Bobby Knights. And I even throw Pat Summitt in there of like, I'm going to yell, we're going to scream, we're going to try to like, you're supposed to listen to everything that I say, whatever. To now, I think it's shifted to more. Trying to be the best, trying to win, trying to score the most points, trying to, do you know what I mean?

• 24:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And so now kids are mapping out how they're going to break LeBron James' record. And they haven't even stepped on the NBA court yet. If you're chasing that versus if you just accomplish it while you're trying to win, or it's a part of your career, I think it shifts like who you are and your purpose and all of that stuff. Like you can't just, you can't chase that and not shift other values that you have and who you are and what you represent. Like to me, I always look at, like Steph Curry's mindset is the way Steph Curry's mindset is because he grew up undersized, undervalued, underrecruited, underrated. You can't, that'll never, it won't work.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  And now it has, but he developed those character traits that were the like supporting role, that were the role player, that was like understood the importance of the screen off ball to be able to get somebody. Like whereas you have a LeBron James, you have a Kevin Durant, from the start, all eyes on them. And that comes with different personality traits you have to develop to withstand all of that. I mean, all the eyeballs are on you, everything you do, every move you make, people are going to scrutinize. So it's just kind of like really survival of the fittest. And you can't blame athletes for almost being the way they are because, I mean, I feel like to some extent, sometimes it's a defense mechanism. It's crazy.

• 25:29Ryan Holiday?

  There's a famous quote, "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." And I think there's something about, you know, obviously a lot of athletes come from really rough backgrounds, but I think anyone that has any kind of childhood wound or feels small or not enough or not seen, there's something about sort of turning yourself over to the ambition and the drive and the mastery that makes you not have to feel small or weak or like nothing. And maybe you tell yourself, this is all a means to an end. And once I make enough money, once I have enough followers, once I... Prove indisputably how good I am, then I'll feel good.

• 26:12Ryan Holiday?

  But you still go home to yourself and you're that same person. And so, yeah, there's this, there's this tendency to think that achieving outside stuff will fix our inside problems, but we still have them.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  And I think sometimes the outside stuff is like a buffer for, I mean, it buffers what you're going through. And people think you're not going through those same problems because of the things that you're accomplishing. So it is, uh, it is a difficult thing. I know we haven't talked about money, but like a lot of people like to scrutinize athletes for the decisions they make and all that stuff. And it's like, I can't imagine being handed 200 million at 18 or 19 years old.

• 26:55Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's like a science experiment.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Really, I can't imagine many people that would be able to navigate in that way. Yeah, but everybody always has an opinion when the emotion is removed. You know, everybody has what they would do without, I mean, we, especially nowadays with everything going on from trials to, you know, childhood stars. And I mean, everybody has an opinion of what went wrong and how they could have, you know, all these things. But it's like, they would probably do the same.

• 27:24Ryan Holiday?

  Well, especially if you're in that place where you're just like, I'm a machine. I'm doing what I do. I've turned off all these parts of myself. And by the way, I'm also busy and exhausted and all these other things. Then you give that person millions of dollars. Like, how are they going to make good decisions? Making good decisions requires self-awareness, time and space for reflection, just time period, right? And that's the one thing that you don't have as an athlete. Like you're, you're literally a ticking clock. You don't know how long you can do this.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's also the emotion. You know, like if we were machines, then this year, what I do this year should be what I can do next year. Like you're not taking into account like emotions and insecurities. And, you know, you could shoot the same shot, you can get to the same spot and it doesn't go in. And then you start second guessing yourself, you know, and it creeps in. And whether people want to admit it or not, like, I really feel like it's like the belief and the energy that's like, oh, we've been in this situation before. So then you almost have this like extra energy that your belief that it will work out really improves the results that will follow. And when people are trying to like navigate.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  You know, trying to create those results. I mean, I, I won at every level before I got to the, I mean, high school, two championships, college, two championships, two gold medals. And then I got to the WNBA and we had a chance my first year to go to the finals and we lost on a last second shot. I can remember the time, the place, how it looked, what happened when the ball came through the net. And at that point, I was naive and was like, okay, we're gonna be back next year. Like, we got this, we got this. But as the results were delayed, the more my fears and all of that crept in. And so I think that that had an impact on like how my, the trajectory of my career panned out, but also like my belief in like

• 29:19Speaker 01

  winning a championship and being able to get over the hump. Like, I, I ask myself all the time, if that shot didn't go in, would I be sitting here with like four or five championships? Because you see that winning is unlocked. It, it's a muscle.

• 29:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Like, knowing how to win is a muscle. It really is. Like, you develop it, you grow it, you get the result, and then you're like, oh, that's what we have to do in this moment.

• 29:42Ryan Holiday?

  But counterfactuals are so difficult, right? Maybe that shot goes in, you win that championship. But you learn a dangerous lesson about how easy it is to win at that level. And maybe you never make it back there, right? Like, do, do you think about that experience being formative? Like, it was difficult, you probably wouldn't have chosen it. No one chooses for the game winning shot to not go in, or, or vice versa. But do you feel like that was, that was character building and formative for you? And it shaped where you ended up going, which is, I mean, pretty impressive, you having both, your jersey retired simultaneously on two teams. Like, it's not like it's a, I wonder if, if she could have been something, if she could have been a contender. Like, it worked out. Do,

• 30:26Ryan Holiday?

  do you see one leading to the other in a positive way?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yes. But a counter to that would be if we would have won that championship, you're automatically submitted as a winner. So in your head, you're a winner. To your teammates, you're a winner. To your peers, you're a winner. To the fans, you're a winner. And yes, that comes with pressure. But I think, you know, coming from winning in high school, winning in college, winning, you know, at the Olympic level, like, that was a place I was used to operating from.

• 30:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  You know? And so, operating from a place of like, underdog, was not necessarily like where I was used to. And then I became like, fight. Okay, I gotta fight. I gotta, like, You know, do all these things. And I think from a human level, I navigated and found my way. Had I won, maybe, human wise, I wouldn't be as like, step back and like, observe and enjoy the moment and humble and all of these things. Maybe I would be a different human. But from a basketball player, I can't, it would have had to be easier just because I felt like for so long, when the ball doesn't bounce your way, we judged so much. Like, we judged the Brooklyn Nets with Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving

• 31:36Speaker 01

  as failure. But we forget KD's toe was on the line and they could have beat the Bucks. Like, KD's toe was on the line, but we look back and that, and then that's carried into the narrative of who he is with Phoenix.

• 31:48Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  And with all of these things. And so, I think that weight that you carry as an athlete is like, determined by this much. It's determined by one toe. It's determined by one ball hitting a backboard and bouncing in. Like, you know what I mean? And so,

• 32:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  But that just speaks to like, I guess we went the long way in saying, I, results matter.

• 32:22Ryan Holiday?

  It is fascinating to me, though. You won in high school, you won in college, you won in the Olympics, and you're saying, well, if we'd won a championship my first season, then I would have felt like a winner. I don't know. I think that past is predictive. I imagine you still would have, you would have woken up the next day and gone, see, now I have to prove that it wasn't a fluke. Right? I don't know if you actually would have felt that way. We never do. We, and the fact that no amount of objective winning previously got you to feel like it had been cemented, is the way that we move the goalposts on ourselves.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  We do it to ourselves. I always say this, like, the greater emotion is losing. It keeps you up at night, it eats you up. It fills you with regret, makes you like an angry person. I don't know. Like, losing is, it's like a flesh eating disease. Like, it just eats at you. I can't explain it. I could be physically sick, you know, when we lose games like that. Winning is one of those things, it's like, You know, you've gone through life and you just had filet mignon and ribeyes and you're like, cool, whatever. And then you taste that wagyu and you're like, I want more of that.

• 33:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not cool with just tasting it and like having it and whatever. Like, I want more. So now every time I go to the restaurant, I want to, I want an A5 wagyu. Like, that's what I want. And that's what winning is. You literally win and then you go to sleep and you wake up and you go to the next season and you want to do it again. And so it's just, it's really unhealthy because if you think about, Tom Brady is one of the great, I mean, seven Super Bowl championships, but he still lost more than he won.

• 33:58Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  So it's just, it's insane. And like, still, like, his last season with Tampa, people scrutinize him the next year. I mean, you-

• 34:08Ryan Holiday?

  It's also weird to think that not everyone thinks that way. Like, my oldest son is eight. Sports don't really light him up, you know, but he still plays. And we had to have a talk about, like, I know you don't care that much, you're just like happy to be there. But like, some of the other kids, it fucking sucks when they lose. And so you either have to not do this, or you have to understand that, like, your decisions are having consequences for other people, right? And then my, like, my wife, like, sometimes we argue, talking about enough. Like, I'm like, well, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. And she's like, why? Like, what do you mean? And, and there really is something ineffable if you're that person and you're talking to someone who, who isn't wired that way, or maybe a not nice way to put, who isn't broken like, like

• 34:53Ryan Holiday?

  you are. To have to explain why you have to do this thing, or why this thing matters to you so much, they're just like, what are you talking about? That's, that's not true.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I feel like you don't know any different, like, that's your personality. I do, I do the same thing. It's funny because, you know, I travel a lot. And one of my friends decided to go with me on a trip. And he was like, this is crazy. Like this is what you do. You you land and then you go work out and then you go to the studio till two o'clock in the morning and then you get up and you work out and then you do your meetings, then you go back to the studio. He's like, you do this every week?

• 35:31Ryan Holiday?

  You're like, isn't this great?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I'm like, it is awesome. Like, you know, type of thing. But it's like, I don't know. I feel like that's the gift of like, the human body. Like, we're wired the way we're wired and we adapt in the all in all, like what we want to do. I would be psycho if I was just sitting here not doing anything. Now, there's a time and place for that. Hundred percent. I've learned I need to take my times and like chill and relax and stuff like that. But it's like what we love, right? Like, it's why we're sitting here having a conversation.

• 36:02Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, I think I used to be more judgmental of people who weren't that way. Like, there was something wrong with them. And now I'm actually, I've switched it and I'm more jealous. I go, man, that must be nice. You know, that like

• 36:15Speaker 01

  To be able to, yeah.

• 36:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes. Like, there's

• 36:18Speaker 01

  But it's not.

• 36:18Ryan Holiday?

  There's a freedom. Maybe, though. Maybe.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  For them, maybe. But for us, like, we would go crazy. Like, I don't know. Going back to what you said with your son, my daughter is the exact same way. And I don't know, she has two parents that are professional athletes. And then she has a bonus mom, my wife, that play is an Olympian and a professional athlete. She's three of her four parents are competitive athletes. Now, my wife's not the most competitive. Like, she's like, I'll play and make it. But like, I don't really care if I win dominoes or win horse. Like, it doesn't keep me up at nights, you know. I almost get mad at her because she's not competitive. I'm like, could you could you just do it for me? You know, like, be competitive. She's like, no, why would I want to do that? My daughter is the exact same way. She wants to win, but it's she's

• 37:05Speaker 01

  like, I mean, like, we're getting gelato? Like, are we? Okay, so popcorn later? She's cool, but it's like, it's the mindset of like, how do you, how do you then turn that on for other stuff? Like, how are you then like competitive when it comes to taking a test?

• 37:22Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe that success is apparent, though. Maybe you've actually raised a child that feels good and loved and enough and comfortable in themselves. They realize that external stuff doesn't say anything about them internally. And then, you know, when they find their thing, whatever that is, maybe they'll have a little bit more of the competition, but they won't, they won't have to turn themselves into an animal or a machine to get enjoyment about. Like, like, sometimes you meet people and they're like, oh, I just love painting. I just do it. I just do it for fun. And I'm like, what, what would that be like? I can't not turn it into a job, you know? You, you just enjoy your hobby?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  It is so true because everything, it doesn't matter if it's beach volleyball, that's like my new hobby, or like cycling, I'm peloton-ing and it's like, you know, pedals by Patty will pedal by me. And I'm like, did she just, did she just pedal by me? Like, no, that's not

• 38:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, or the leaderboard, you're like, I can't let this person I've never heard of in my life be one space ahead of me.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And then they try to high five you. I'm like, oh, don't do that. Don't high five me after you pass me on the output. Like, now I'm chasing you down. So

• 38:29Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  It's something you can't turn off. But what I, what I think parenting has taught me is we are literally just guardrails.

• 38:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  They are gonna go where they go. We're just trying to keep them from falling off the cliff. That's it.

• 38:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Because they are wired the way they are gonna be wired. We can like plant seeds and try to, but they're gonna go with what you give them, the way they're gonna do it. And so I've learned, I'm not trying to turn my daughter into a competitive crazy person.

• 38:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  But I am trying to get her to shift her mindset to like, okay, let's figure out what we're committed to and let's work hard at that and commit to the process. We don't have to be, you know, crazy person to be able to like succeed at stuff. We're also not gonna like be not a great teammate. And so I think it's just my guardrails have been.

• 39:23Ryan Holiday?

  I believe everyone has a thing, right? Like, this is, this is the thing you were meant to do. This is what lights you up. This is, this is your thing. And some people are lucky enough to find it early. Some people are gaslit about that thing. Or, you know, like, at different times and different generations prevented from pursuing that thing. But we don't control what it is, but we're lucky when we find it. You know, one of the fascinating things you talk about in the book is realizing like, okay, you love basketball, but you loving basketball as a woman, it means something very different than somebody who's equally talented loving basketball as a man. Like, it's, we're talking potentially hundreds of millions of dollars different. And like, there's a gender element to that. But I was thinking about, I don't know if you know who Paul Rabel is? He's like the greatest lacrosse player of all time.

• 40:06Ryan Holiday?

  He's like the LeBron James of lacrosse. But it's like, the difference between being the greatest of all time at lacrosse, and the difference, being the greatest NFL tight end of all time is, again, hundreds of millions of dollars. It's like, somebody falls in love with rap or rock music. Somebody else gets lit up by the cello. You know, again, very different. Like, I love writing, that's what I do. I fell in love with writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. There's a ceiling, you know? So, some, sometimes the ceiling's way up here, sometimes it's way up here. Sometimes the market's different for different things. There's kind of a, an unfairness, or just a randomness in, in that we don't choose what we fall in love with,

• 40:47Ryan Holiday?

  and we don't necessarily choose how the world values that thing that we fall in love with.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  That's such an interesting point, because you're right. I mean, I just don't think that we're doing ourselves a disservice when we fight our passions.

• 41:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  And I know society tells you, like, money-wise, this is what you should be doing, or, you know, you should have, or you should follow. And there's that, like, pull to be able to, obviously, financially take care of yourself and your family. But I'm a big alchemist. Like, I read The Alchemist, like, I read it every year. You know, I truly believe, like, the, the entire universe conspires to help you find what you're meant to be, and what you're meant to have, and who you're meant to love, if you just let it.

• 41:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  And lean into it and really like believe in it. And so it is a fight to even remain true to yourself versus chasing checks. And

• 41:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, social media is an experiment and you can tell what sells. Quick and easy sells, sex sells, controversy sells. I mean, it's like basically high school. That's what social media is. It's easy to get caught up in that. It really is. And some people have to. I mean, that's the way that they have to live their life and that's what they want to do. But at the end of the day, I really truly believe like my job in just being me is to find what I'm passionate about. And my job as a parent is to steer my kids to what's going to be their passion. And it sucks to think about, you know, the lacrosse player that doesn't get the same love as in notoriety as Michael Jordan or LeBron or any of those players. And it sucked. Yeah, I came out of the high

• 42:24Speaker 01

  school the same time Dwight Howard came out of high school.

• 42:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  You know, completely different trajectories. And even now, to this day, looking back, if we would have had NIL when I was in college, because I think dollar signs, zeros, those zeros at the end of your check, they matter. They matter in the amount of respect that you command when you walk in a room and the amount of conversation and eyeballs and things like that, it matters. And so, I mean, that sells. And so, yes, I'd be lying if, you know, that isn't, that is unfair. But I think it's more of like, again, going back to like you having to live with yourself every single day. It is phenomenal when you're able to do what you're passionate.

• 43:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  And, and for, and your purpose, and it just wakes you up in the morning and you love it. And so be, to be able to have a job, even now, like I'm, the television is on. For the pregame show.

• 43:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  The basketball game, the postgame show, and then we go to sleep. And I wake up and watch the next day reactions of the game. Like, I am in love with sports. And so to be able to say, like, when my family is looking at me crazy, like, can we just turn off this game? To be able to say, like, it's my job.

• 43:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's the dream.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's the dream. And so, I don't know, like, I'm sure writing, you probably, when you were younger, went and wrote all the time and went and you enjoyed it and things like that. And it's like, now to say, like, no, I have to write. It's my job. Like, I have to finish this. It's my job. Like, yes, it comes with a price, but it also is something that you're passionate about.

• 43:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and look, I don't like this sort of, oh, just be happy to be here and take what they give you. Like, no, you're not doing anyone a service by getting paid less than you're worth. And you only get paid what you demand and what people sort of collectively come together and fight for. So I think people should get, that's, that's what it's all about. Especially if you're delivering value for, you know, large corporations. Like, take, take them for all that they're, all that they're worth. That, that's part of it too. But, yeah, the, the dream of going, hey, I get paid to do a thing that if I'm being honest, I would definitely do for free. That's a fucking amazing thing.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  That's what I think is a cheat code, man. Like, when Turner and Amazon were like, yeah, we're gonna pay you to commentate on basketball. I'm like, so, instead of sitting on my couch watching March Madness, I'm just in a studio watching March Madness. And we're gonna just go through all the games and watch the game winners. And, I mean, it's, I'm going to Indianapolis to, to the finals. Like, it's just, I'm living my childhood dreams, for sure.

• 44:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, this is why you have to have agents. Like, when I hear people, like, I represent myself, I go, how could you possibly do that? Because there's an inherent bit of leverage that they're always gonna be able to exploit over you, which is they know you like doing this. You need, you need somebody else to go in there and, and, and act as if you're willing to walk away. Because you probably aren't.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  No, it's true.

• 45:23Ryan Holiday?

  You love the thing. You would be doing it anyway.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  You need someone to, like, I would say monetize your value.

• 45:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  And like, you need someone that isn't, because, yeah, you're right. We probably. We would be doing this for free. Honestly, don't tell anybody.

• 45:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, you need somebody else to go in and go, here's what it's worth on the market, not what it's worth to them as the person, because they're fundamentally biased. You need someone in there to be like, hey, we're not only are we asking for market rate, but we're going to push market rate because that's, yeah, that struggle. Especially also, yeah, if you have that sort of insecurity part of you that's just like, wants to still be a part of it, doesn't want to miss out. You know, you'll, you'll say yes to stuff that, that you need someone to step in and be like, no, they also have a family, they also have this, you know, they gotta take care of themselves.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  That's a daily conversation my agent and I always have. He's like, no, you're not doing that. Like, we're not doing this. It's true.

• 46:37Ryan Holiday?

  So talk to me about The Alchemist, because that is a beautiful book. And how did you find it? And why do you think it spoke to you?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Well, I first read it in high school. It was one of our high school reading books. And I was kind of like, I mean, it's cool. Like, you know, it didn't really like speak to me. And then, yeah, fast forward, I started reading it. Oh, my gosh, this is 2012, 2013, I think it was. And was it high school? It might've been college. But anyway, 2012, I picked it up again, and I was at a fork in the road in my life. And it just spoke to me in so many different ways.

• 47:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Like, it just spoke to me through the lens of like, just putting my head down and fighting for my passions. But it also spoke to me in a way of like, 2013, 2014. You know, I was overseas in Russia. It was cold, it was, I was miserable, I was by myself. Like, I was trying to like, I was literally just trying to keep my head above water. And I feel like The Alchemist just like inspired me to like, want to be that shepherd boy. And like, want to go out on the journey and want to like, learn all the lessons and listen to the environment around me. To wait for love, like, it's gonna come. Meaning Fatima, you know, like, you're willing to allow somebody to grow in who they are and what they represent. And then

• 48:00Speaker 01

  That can wait and you can come back to that and you're gonna be okay. And so it was just, I included The Alchemist in my book a lot, like a lot of,

• 48:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I know.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  You know, the quotes from my wife and I's wedding. Everything was, yeah, everything was The Alchemist. I mean, to this day, we still read it together and it's unbelievable.

• 48:20Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I always love when someone has a book that they, they didn't just like, but they come back to it over and over again. There's something about that experience. Obviously, the book doesn't change. So what do you take out of it in all these subsequent reads?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Well, my wife's Fatima. I've already determined that. She allowed me to like, complete myself and work on myself while like being patient and understanding and all of those things. But I think it also changed the way that like I looked at the world. Like, I really valued the things that were closest and personal to me and not necessarily worried about what other people thought I should do. You know, they always talk about how, you know, they don't want, people don't want to marry like the, they want to marry the bakers and the shepherds and all that stuff. They don't want to marry all of these. And I don't know, it just spoke to me because my wife came in a package and I think, I mean, I was, I'd only dated men before that. I'd only been with men and I'd always pictured myself with a prince charming.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  And then it just was, over the years, it's like all of these different parts of the book just speak to you in different ways. I mean, even the way that you talk about at the beginning and, you know, looking at yourself in your reflection, you know, the short story they tell at the beginning of the book. It literally is just, how can I wake up every single day and be able to look at myself in the mirror and know that I'm working towards something great? And then when you're doing that, the entire universe is going to conspire to help you achieve it. And I truly believe in that, like truly.

• 49:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's interesting, like the hero's journey, we think about it as this sort of straightforward thing. But like, I've always been struck by the fact that like, the second step on the hero's journey is the refusal of the call. You know, like the, so we get the thing, or we feel the feeling, or the sensation, or the pull, and then we second guess ourselves. Like, this is true, I think, you know, should I, you know, should I do this? Or should I do that? Should I go for this? Should I go for that? It must have been strange, yeah, having feelings for your wife and then going like, wait, am I a person who does that? Like, you're having to re, literally reconsider your entire identity as a person.

• 50:26Ryan Holiday?

  That would be so overwhelming. So, so none of these things are straightforward or easy.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  But the crazy thing is, it took time for me to do that.

• 50:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  And that was a struggle, but it was more through the lens of like, what everybody else would think.

• 50:41Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  And I feel like that's where the alchemist helped me realize that it's me that has to wake up every single day with me.

• 50:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  And we live our life, I'm not going to get this quote right from the alchemist, but it's basically like, we live our life, I was trying to look up this, this quote, I wrote it down in my notes. But basically like, we live our lives for, I'm gonna find it. We live our lives for everyone else. And then you wake up one day and, you know, you've gone through the monotony of like.

• 51:10Ryan Holiday?

  I think I have, I'm looking for it.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, I have it in my notes and I'm going to get this right. Are you like a note, like a note taker?

• 51:17Ryan Holiday?

  And. Yeah, yeah. Like this is your, this is your book.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Freaking love it. So are you, do you have a specific genre of books that you're most interested in?

• 51:26Ryan Holiday?

  I'm usually read biographies, that's what I find, stories that, that go into my books. So I read a lot of biography, a lot of history.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Like what time period?

• 51:35Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I mean, I write a lot about, you know, Greek and Roman history, so.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  No, I know, but I'm saying what, because what you write about sometimes isn't what, like for me, if I'm watching, if I'm watching something, I love basketball. I love basketball more than anything. But football is like my like.

• 51:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  If I'm sitting down to watch a game, it's football. So like, I know you write a lot about that, but like, if you're sitting down just to like, on a beach with a coffee.

• 51:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  What's your book?

• 52:00Ryan Holiday?

  I try to read, I think that's, it's like you find the thing you love that you, you, you do. And then you find stuff that helps you understand that better. I'm sure watching football helps you understand basketball, you know?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:11Ryan Holiday?

  Um, so for, yeah, I write about philosophy, but I read a lot of history because the philosophy is what, what I use, the stories to illustrate the ideas. Like I read about the civil war, I read about military history. That's why I love biographies, because you're getting the whole arc of someone's life. Like I was just thinking when you were talking, like in my book on courage, one of the main characters, Florence Nightingale, and she as this young girl gets this call, she thinks it's the voice of God. That says like, hey, I need you to do this thing to be to go into nursing, which was at that point not an established profession that like rich British women could participate in. And, you know, so she asked some people about it and they're like, are you out of your mind? You absolutely cannot do this. You know, like this is beneath you.

• 52:54Ryan Holiday?

  It's not going to work. You're not qualified. And so she she puts it on the shelf and and then she hears the voice again, like eight years later. But this time the voice says, are you going to let what other people think holds you back from my service? And I think how interesting it is, like, we had this thing that we want to do, but then we let what other people might think of it decide whether we do it or not.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  And I think we have books that transform our thought. And that's why I love reading is there are so many books that have spoken to me. I'm a note taker. So I highlight, I go back, I reread, and then I kind of like analyze what it is. Because I know they say that you have to read a book two or three times to really like grasp its true meaning. And that was what the outcome, I mean, that was what kept coming back year after year when I would read it, because it was like 2012, when I decided to read it every year. You know, by 2015, 2016, that was what allowed me

• 53:57Speaker 01

  to take the step in like, being open to really listen and listening to my heart. Because they talk about like, the soul of the universe and like, the soul of the world and how it's connected. And I just really truly believe that stuff started to align when I started to align with like, what my passions and my values were. Like, other stuff started to align as well. And I don't think it's by chance.

• 54:20Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  And sometimes we just have to listen to our hearts and what we want. And I think when I started doing that, maybe like, my followers on Instagram didn't increase, and maybe the reach that I had and the videos and stuff like that didn't get the most views. But I like, go to sleep every single night at peace, and I wake up in the morning. Excited to live the day, you know, like whatever

• 54:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Happens and go, you know, and then everything's not perfect, you know, by any means.

• 54:48Ryan Holiday?

  But at least you're being yourself, right?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  But at least I'm being myself. Exactly. I'm gonna find this quote.

• 54:53Ryan Holiday?

  All right. I'll say this while you're looking for it. I remember reading The Alchemist before I'd really gone for it as a writer. And, and there's some level where it's sort of beautiful and inspiring about going for what you want and following your dreams or whatever. But you don't really understand what any of it means until you actually put yourself out there and do it, right? Like, you can only have a sort of surface level understanding of what he's talking about until you have, you've taken that like sort of real first step.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  I found one of the quotes. I don't know if this is the quote I was talking about, but like, it tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the fear itself, or the suffering itself. No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams because every second of the search and the second encounter with God and with eternity. And I think for a long time, a lot of people, we feel like we are willing to suffer to satisfy what we feel like the cookie cutter or box or lane that we have to fit in. And that goes with being stagnant. That goes with not taking the next step. It goes with maybe continuing to write as a hobby and not as not going for it with your, you know,

• 56:01Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  With every ounce of you. And there are things that I've gone for with every ounce of myself and I failed. But I don't think I feel as bad as if I wouldn't have gone for it. And I told myself that, like in life as well, like when you're trying to pursue being happy, like you gotta kind of take the same, the same blueprint for that as well.

• 56:23Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I imagine sort of going for it professionally and knowing how hard that was and knowing how people didn't always understand, but then also knowing how rewarding it was, probably informed your ability to go for it personally. Like to, to take the risk, to try something, to be like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna trust myself here, even though I don't maybe fully trust myself.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  What's crazy is, is like, I think I lost that. You know, like how they talk about in The Alchemist, how like children are so innocent and they believe in all of this stuff and then the world kind of like makes them fit into the box that they think that they should fit into?

• 57:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  I went through that process and you're right. I think it did take me knowing what it took to get to winning and all of these wins and losses and championships and all of those things to really value taking the chance of truly trying to like fight for your passions and do it with the people that you really truly love. And I know we live in an amazing world, but let's just be honest, it is a lot easier to live the way the world wants you to live. It is, it's a lot easier, but when you're not connected to that and your soul doesn't want that, like I'm 6'4", people fought for so long. Do not dribble, just turn and shoot and make it in the paint. And my dad was like, no, you're gonna play point guard because what if you don't dribble?

• 57:45Speaker 01

  What if you don't grow anymore? And then I learned how to like dribble, pass, shoot, take the rebound, go coast to coast, dish and assist, all those things. And then now, because the world now sees it through a different perspective or viewpoint, now it's positionless basketball.

• 57:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  So now it's like, if you can't do that, then, so what about all the people that just stuck to what the world told them? They're left behind. And I don't know, I feel like if you're scared to do something and it's in your heart and it's what you want and what you value, like the world changes. We've seen that. I mean, it changes, times change. But um, you know, I believe like fighting for your passions is like the most important thing.

• 58:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's a quote from Seneca, he's saying that too many people lack the fickleness to live as they ought. And he says, instead, they, they live simply as they have begun. The point being like, we just get comfortable with how things are or how they're supposed to be and we close ourselves off to what they could be. And the fickleness is an interesting word there because fickleness seems like a bad thing. We tend to be judgmental of people who are fickle or change their mind. But like, where would you be if you hadn't changed your mind a bunch of times? You wouldn't be right here, you know, like you, you got here to where you are now, to what You think is so great by a lot of changes and then, and then someone comes along and suggests

• 59:03Ryan Holiday?

  a different change or life forces you to make a change and you're like, no, this is the worst. I can't, how could I possibly? So there's, I think the idea of, of like, we're products of change, but then we're, we hate and are afraid of change is one of the kind of paradoxes of our existence.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  And it doesn't matter how many times change is thrown at you, it's still uncomfortable and you're still, you know, it's still uncomfortable, but I feel like it's less uncomfortable, you know, like it's the same thing with decision making, you know, when you're trying to make choices and there's a fork in the road and you really truly believe that you go left or right. And this is the, this determines who you'll be in the future where as sometimes the way you look at it can change that as well. Again, one of the easy reads Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf is a really good book and something that I read when I was kind of on my journey of trying to win a championship. And it taught me to like relinquish results and really truly live and die and breathe

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  in the process. And when you do that, they talk about who you want beside you in battle. It's the soldier that has relinquished the results of maybe they would die are the ones that are most equipped to actually win. And that's who I want to be. Like, I don't want to be results driven because listen, like the Can Do Mindset could sell 300 copies and I still put passion, purpose and energy into it.

• 1:00:27Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  But it's not going to keep me from like, if I want to do something else, or if I really feel like I need to express myself in a different way from taking the next step, you know? And I mean, sometimes we look at no's as like, okay, this is a stopping point, but really it's just like a pivot.

• 1:00:43Ryan Holiday?

  I think you want to get to a place, at least what I've tried to do where like sort of the winning and the success is extra. So like, it's not that you don't want it. Of course you want it, but you've already gotten most of the value out of it, you know, like that you wrote the book, you wanted to write, you know, it says what you wanted it to say, you're proud of it, you didn't phone it in, you know, you did all the things that you could do. And then, you know, you did all the marketing that you could do where you have influence on how it does. And then, If it sells 3 million or 300, obviously 3 million is preferable to 300, but it's all extra on top of what you've already taken out of it. And that's, that's, I think, where you want to get like in, in New Orleans, they have this, this word

• 1:01:28Ryan Holiday?

  land yap, which means like the extra donut that gets thrown in there, like the baker's,

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Ryan Holiday?

  The baker's dozen. Yeah. And I love, I think about that word all the time because it's like, yeah, sure. It's like, I want to get paid. I want the bonus. I want the sales. I want the recognition. But like, that's not what I'm doing it for. That's the extra on top of what I've already taken out of getting to do it.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Couldn't agree with you more. I think I've gotten to a place where like your validation, and it's hard as an athlete because your validation does come from, I mean, it's an entertainment, like,

• 1:02:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  basketball is an entertainment, but the more I've been on this journey, the more I'm like, you have to have those internal validations and reasons for doing things. Because if you depended on the external, like, they love you, then they hate you, then they wait for what's next. Like, that's literally the cycle of everything. It doesn't matter if you're a writer, actor, you know, I mean, we're seeing some of the most beautiful women ever to walk this earth be scrutinized as they get older. Like, it's like, you know what I mean? And so it's literally a society of what have you done for me lately? And if it's, you know, if you're at the perfect time and how many zeros you have in your check and all this stuff. And it's like, but you have 24 hours in a day where you have to live with you.

• 1:02:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  And you have to do what makes you happy. And I think the people that are doing that, it doesn't matter how many zeros are on their check, how many followers they have, all that stuff. It really is about them and the circle that they have. That's true, truly happy. I mean, you see the billionaires that are unhappy and you see people that are poor that are the happiest. So, I mean, obviously it's not any of that stuff. It's just about how you deal with it internally. And so I think it's getting to that place of zen.

• 1:03:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  That I'm still trying to master. I haven't mastered it.

• 1:03:16Ryan Holiday?

  Likewise.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  But still trying to master it.

• 1:03:19Ryan Holiday?

  I have glimpsed it occasionally. I certainly don't have it.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Man, me too. And I glimpsed it in like the smallest of moments, which I think is is super special.

• 1:03:30Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I thought the book was incredible and I do hope it sells 3 million copies. And it was awesome to chat.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I appreciate you, Ryan.

• 1:03:39Ryan Holiday?

  Awesome. Well, it was great to meet. Hopefully we can do it in person someday.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Man, I hope so. Where is home base for you?

• 1:03:45Ryan Holiday?

  I live outside Austin.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  I'll let you know. I'll probably be in Dallas a little bit more this year because of the Cooper Flag, Cooper Flag Show. But yeah, I'll let you know if I'm down there. I would love to love to chat with you.

• 1:03:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, come to the bookstore. We've got all of Paulo Coelho's books.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Nothing like The Alchemist. I tried like three or four of them. I like.

• 1:04:04Ryan Holiday?

  I haven't loved. The other ones haven't lit me up as much.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  I just have not lit me up. And I know it's like a letdown. It's like, you know, the prequel and then like you have the sequel and everyone goes like, you're judged by what you did before and scrutiny and all that. But I'm like, I try and I just sit down and I try to read the books and I can't finish it. So.

• 1:04:21Ryan Holiday?

  So I feel the exact same way.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  You gotta let me know, like, because I always, whenever I do podcasts like this, I would love to know like a history book that right now I'm reading. Let's see.

• 1:04:32Ryan Holiday?

  And what are you reading?

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Right now I'm reading Franklin and Winston.

• 1:04:35Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Big on, big on World War II civil rights. So those are kind of like my two eras.

• 1:04:41Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so I got two for you then. Okay, so there's an amazing, if you're reading about Churchill now, there's an amazing biography called Clementine by Sonia Purnell, which is about Winston Churchill's wife, who was an incredible lady.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:54Ryan Holiday?

  I think you would really like that, because it gives you a different, it gives you a different sense of who he was. Like, he says, like, the greatest decision he ever made was, was marrying her because none of the other things would have been possible without it. So that one's good. If you're interested in civil rights, obviously, there's like a million books. There's a, if you like biographies and you just want to listen to like a million, Taylor Branch has this three book series on Martin Luther King. That's like, each one's like a thousand pages. So this is like a whole, this is like a year commitment, but he's probably the greatest biographer of Martin Luther King ever.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  So crazy. That's so crazy that you say that. I just went to Memphis and I went to the Lorraine Motel where they turned it into a civil rights museum. They're actually doing the expansion that's across the street that's going to include a lot of WNBA stuff. So I've started kind of like down the MLK route. So like while I was there, I bought The Movement That Made Us. So like this is one of the books that I'm gonna kind of embark on and read. I read, um, forgetting the author that wrote it, but it was basically like MLK's last year.

• 1:05:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  And his last year of life and how like people had turned on him and like his popularity was down and like, you know, him coming out and speaking on Vietnam War was like all that.

• 1:06:06Ryan Holiday?

  There, there's another book by Tom Ricks called Waging a Good War. And he's a, he's a military strategist. And so he looks at the civil rights movement, not as like a moral movement, like whether it was right or wrong, obviously it's right. But he looks at them as like military strategists, like it was a campaign. Cause like they would pick a city and they'd go, we're gonna go to this city and we're gonna break these motherfuckers. Like, we're gonna flood the jails, we're gonna force the sheriff to overreach, we're gonna get the press in there. Um, and so he, he looks at it like, I think we've, we've kind of learned the wrong lesson from the civil rights movement, which is we're just like, they were right and they went out and they protested and that changed everyone's mind.

• 1:06:49Ryan Holiday?

  And that's not what fucking happened at all, right? Like it, it was, it was like, like Martin Luther King has this line where he's like, yeah, I care about persuasion, but he's like, I care more about coercion. It was a public relations and a sort of like strategic battle. And so I, I think that's really interesting. And then I just did a book that you might like. Do you know who George Raveling is? Did you ever meet George Raveling?

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Yes. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Yes, I know who that is. Who is that?

• 1:07:17Ryan Holiday?

  He's in the movie Air, very briefly, but, but he's.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Okay. So Nike. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. He's, he's the guy that brings Jordan to Nike because he was on, he was, he was Bobby Knight's assistant. But he more famously at like 25 years old, he'd been a great basketball player. He was one of the first black players at Villanova, one of the first, anyways, he gets roped into doing security at the March on Washington. And because he's like six, five. And so you can see, and there's pictures of him standing there, but, but anyways, when Martin Luther King walks down the steps, he, he hands George the I Have a Dream speech. Which he, which he owned until recently, he just donated it to the African American Smithsonian.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  That is unbelievable. I never knew that.

• 1:08:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And then he just happened to go on to be the director of international basketball at Nike.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  For Nike. That's incredible. Um, I just watched, obviously, the Bayard Rustin.

• 1:08:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  The Bayard Rustin, which they did an amazing job on, on Netflix. Like, I really, really, really liked, I liked how they-

• 1:08:22Ryan Holiday?

  What an incredible man.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  And I just went to the museum and they did a whole nother exhibit on him and his partner donated like all of his stuff. Donated like letters and like heads of states that donated letters to him and like, letters directly from King to him, like, kind of trying to organize, like, they have a whole section on like when he organized the march and like,

• 1:08:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  They have his drawings of where he wanted stuff and like, it's really, it's really cool. So I'm definitely going to check that out. I'd never heard that about George.

• 1:08:53Ryan Holiday?

  I'll send you your address. I'll send you that one because I, I just sent a bunch to him to sign. So I'll, I'll send you one when, when I get them back.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  You're the absolute best. I would like nerd out. I'm definitely coming to Austin. I love this stuff. This is-

• 1:09:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and look, if you want to have your heart broken as far as civil rights go, you've probably read Wright Thompson's stuff. He's such a great sports writer. But he, he did a book on, on Emmett Till that is like, fuck. The, the premise of the book is he realizes, because he's from that town, that like one of his neighbors, the barn where they murdered Emmett Till is just still there. And the guy stores his Christmas decorations in it. And it's sort of about the, the sort of discovery of the story and then the, turning the barn into a museum and, and all, it's a, it's a amazing, heartbreaking, magnificent book.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  That, like, every time breaks my, I mean, because we knew their second, like, his second cousins that were actually, like, his first cousins were in, like, room when he-

• 1:09:49Ryan Holiday?

  Because they moved to Chicago.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Because he's, yeah, they're from, well, Emmett's from Chicago, but he knew, and then they ended up moving afterwards, after the trial. And there's the book, The Race Against Time. Have you heard of that? Basically is a writer that goes back in the early 90s and tries to get everybody convicted for the crimes that they committed in the 60s. And so they end up getting like Medgar Evers assassin, the preacher that was killed like point blank range by one of the heads of the KKK. They went back and got him at 90 years old and he got, he went to jail. Like that book I read in a day.

• 1:10:25Ryan Holiday?

  Race Against Time.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  It's by Jerry, Jerry Mitchell. He basically like reopens like all of.

• 1:10:31Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Like they did with the Holocaust. Yeah.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he like reopens all of it. And it is crazy because actually Medgar Evers' brother and his mom were actually at the trial and all his kids and like they, they reopened the 16th Baptist church. They were able to like take down him. Vernon Dahmer is his name. So, yeah.

• 1:10:53Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  So this one was a great book for sure.

• 1:10:56Ryan Holiday?

  All right. Well, we're gonna have to start a book club.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Let's do it. I'm serious. We should do it. I would love to do that.

• 1:11:02Ryan Holiday?

  All right. I'll get, I'll get your info. We'll share books.

• 1:11:10Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.