This Is A Good Moment | Ask DS

It’s hard not to look at the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and Cato and Zeno and not see what seems like one trauma after another. The loss of young children. Civil wars. Betrayals. Sickness. Criticism. Droughts, deforestation and powerful storms. Then again, it’s hard not to look at our lives and see the same thing. Financial crises. Political unrest. Political violence. A pandemic. Terrorist attacks. Mass shootings. Climate change. But of course, this is not how a Stoic tries to look at things. Because it’s not a great lens.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan presents part one of his Q&A session with a group of doctors in which he covers the Stoic way of motivating a team to achieve a common goal, how we can use routine to come back to ourselves, and more.✉️ 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  This is a good moment. It's hard not to look at the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and Cato and Zeno and not see what seems like one trauma after another: the loss of young children, civil wars, betrayal, sickness, criticism, droughts, powerful storms. And then again, it's hard not to look at our own lives and see the same thing: financial crises, political unrest, political violence, a pandemic, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, climate change. But of course, this is not how a Stoic tries to look at things, because it's not a great lens. Anne Morrow Lindberg, whose book Gift from the Sea we have been quoting from recently, was speaking about the repeated traumas

• 1:28Speaker 00

  that had ravaged Europe in the first half of the 20th century. "The good past is so far away," she wrote, "and the near past is so horrible, and the future is so perilous." But did that mean that people despaired, that they gave up? Hardly. No, instead, she said that the present has a chance to expand into a golden eternity of here and now.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  Because of what had happened, the people of Europe had a certain perspective, an ability to find pleasure and peace in small moments, be it a walk in the countryside or a cup of coffee in a café. They were, in the Stoic sense, resigned. They had given up expectations or a sense of control and instead embraced what was certain, what was up to them at a given moment, which was, in fact, that given moment. As we begin a new year, as we exit another successive year whose essence can be captured with the acronym WTF, we would all do well to follow suit. The good old days are far away. Innocence and ease seems distant.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  The recent past has been exhausting and trying. The future gapes before us, liable to be still more arduous, difficult, even dangerous. So what is left? Only this, here and now. But that can be plenty. That can be an eternity, can be quite wonderful if we choose it to be so.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Dr. Scopus says, "My favorite theme for Marcus Aurelius is quoted in the famous physician's, Sir Williams essay, Equanimitas. Thou shalt be like a rocky promontory in the sea. Against which the violent waves shall crash, but it stands firm and quiets the fury of the sea around it."

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that is an absolutely beautiful passage from Marcus Aurelius and sort of a little historical story related to that. So Marcus Aurelius isn't born to the royal family. The Emperor Hadrian doesn't have an heir. He sees some real potential in this kid, Marcus Aurelius, but he realizes that that is an impossible thing to expect a kid to run the Roman Empire. So Hadrian adopts a guy named Antoninus Pius, Antoninus Pius being in his 50s or 60s and sort of just a tried and true Roman politician.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  So Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius on the condition that Antoninus Pius in turn adopt Marcus Aurelius, and that sets in motion a sort of a training montage, if you will, preparing Marcus Aurelius to one day assume the purple. Now, they expected that Antoninus would live for a few years. Instead, he rules for like the next two decades, forcing Marcus Aurelius to sit in waiting. But instead of resenting this, in fact, they had this wonderful mentor, mentee, you know, master apprentice relationship. Marcus opens meditations with just an enormous list of things, what they call his debts and

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  lessons, what he learns from Antoninus, one of which you can tell comes good in the pandemic. He talks about how to listen to experts, right? Not a thing that all our politicians are so good at. Anyways, when Antoninus finally passes on from this life, his final word, as he passes the crown, so to speak, to Marcus, is equanimitas. He's saying equanimity, that that is the key virtue or trait that a leader has to have. I render this as stillness. My book Stillness is the Key is about how stillness or peace is the thing that unlocks key performance,

• 5:31Ryan Holiday?

  whether it's, you know, in the ER, or it's sitting down to write, or it is, you know, having a great evening with your family. If you are not present, if you are not locked in, if you are thinking about what happened in the past, or you are worried about what's happening in the future, if you're distracted by what's happening outside, you are not, you are not operating at sort of peak performance level. For people who are maybe a little thrown off by that slightly, you know, 19th century interpretation of Marcus Aurelius's writing, I personally like the Gregory Hayes translation. It's the most accessible. In this one, he renders

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  that same quote. He says, "To be like the rock that the waves crash over, and eventually the sea falls still around." That is the Stoic state of ataraxia or peace. I think it's beautifully

• 6:30Ryan Holiday?

  There. Um, the Buddhist version of this is, um, you know, a cup uh with muddy water in it or a bowl with muddy water in it. You let it sit and eventually the silt settles at the bottom and you're able to see through it or potentially drink it. I don't know if you want to, but the point is uh stillness or equanimity or poise or peace uh is a word that exists in almost all the religious and philosophical traditions. You could argue that's the fundamental purpose of all of them. And I think it is what unlocks who we need to be and what we need to be, particularly in high stress or high stakes situations. So that's, that's a great quote

• 7:14Ryan Holiday?

  to bring up and it's, it's one of my absolute favorites to the point that I, I basically wrote a, a whole book about it. Um, and uh, one other related quote, there's a great one from General Mattis, uh, our former Secretary of Defense and someone who actually would carry Marcus Aurelius's meditations with him on deployments. He says, "The single biggest problems for leaders in the information age is a lack of reflection. They're too emotional." He says, "They're too immediate. They don't have space or silence or solitude to reflect on and consider their options and the information that's come their way." And I think that's right. It's not just obvi- uh, obviously, you know, in, in life or death, you know, momentary decisions, you have

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  to act like that. But if there isn't reflection in training and long walks and journaling and discussions like this, you know, you're not going to have the equanimitas to draw on in those moments of crisis.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  So, uh, so, uh, that was an amazing uh response to a, to a quote. Um, just throw any quote at you and see, see if you wrote a book about it.

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Um, you know, Doug Minns also, uh, A radiologist here at HSS, been here for several decades, two decades plus. He asked a question, it's thrown off center. How does one revert to oneself? How to ask for help or remember to ask?

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think this process of reverting to oneself, to me, a big part of it. Let's, let's, let's separate the sort of the in the moment, coming back to yourself. And then there's the sort of more general coming back to oneself. I think a lot about routine. I think a lot about structure. I think a lot about like habits or practices that I do on a daily basis that allow me never to drift too far. Right? So journaling is a big one for me. Some form of strenuous exercise every day is a big one for me. Some meditative time, whether that's journaling or actual meditation.

• 9:21Ryan Holiday?

  I got a cold, a cold plunge recently, so maybe Marcus wasn't too off with his idea of prescribing cold baths. But you know, when, when I sit in that thing for three or four minutes, that's three or four moments that I have to be fully present. And I'm managing my breathing and I'm not doing anything else. And I get a kind of a clarity and a stillness from that, that I, that allows me to come back to my center. I try to have some boundaries, for instance, on devices. One of my rules is I don't use this for the first one hour that I'm awake. The idea being that I don't want to get sucked in or back, drawn back into whatever the distraction was or the problem was I had the night before.

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  I don't sleep with the phone in my room. Now, obviously, I'm not on call on the way that some of you might be on call. So, you know, if patients are dependent on you actually being with this thing, you know, please don't take my advice here. But the point is, I create some boundaries or some space that, and then as well as kind of rhythms or repetitious things that I come back to that center me. Right? The walk that I do in the morning is a big part of this. So I think having practices like that is really important. Now, to the idea of coming back to the center in the moment. One of the things I've come to understand about the Stoics is There's, when Antonina says, no amount of training takes away natural feeling. He's not, he's saying that just because you studied philosophy, just because you thought about this

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  stuff a lot, it doesn't not make you sad when someone you know dies. It doesn't make you not scared when someone jumps around the corner and yells. It doesn't make you not get an adrenaline dump, right? You have the sort of natural, immediate feelings that you have to things. But for the Stoics, it wasn't about stopping that. It was about when do we, when and how quickly do we regrab the reins after that happens? So like for the Stoics, like it's not that a Stoic never gets angry. It's that the Stoic tries not to do things out of anger, right? So someone sends you the most obnoxious, aggressive, provocative email in the world.

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  You're going to be like, what the fuck is this? How could they talk to me this way, right? But you can stop yourself before you hit send on your reply, right? You can type out whatever you want. What actually matters here is whether you hit send or not, right? Ideally, you, you, you've not hit send enough times that you go, I don't even need to type this. I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm not going to respond. But I think for the Stoics, it was about, it wasn't about not having the emotion. It was about, I think ideally, not taking action on that emotion until one's self-control or equanimatus has returned.

• 12:16Ryan Holiday?

  And then, hey, sometimes, sometimes the, the head coach has to throw a little bit of a tantrum to get the team excited, right? Or to send a message to the refs. But there's a difference between the coach being so out of control that they get a technical and give a point to the other team and, you know, is, is not in control of themselves. And the coach making a sort of a deliberate emotional stand, you know, to get people's attention. So I, I think the difference is sort of there.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  Hey, hey, Ryan.

• 12:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Hey, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna try some great questions and there's like seventeen minutes left, so I won't leave time, but there's something that's kind of burning.

• 13:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  As great a talk as I knew you would do, and so thank you, it's incredible to have you. And one of the things I've learned from Stoicism is so many things, and you've just shared about the way I should behave.

• 13:14Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  I behave as an example or as a leader, and I think there's so many amazing leadership lessons. But one of the greatest challenges, and I think Brian would share, for us as leaders, for certainly at HSS, is creating a team.

• 13:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Getting the people to act like a team. And so many of the things that Marcus taught, that everybody's about how you should act.

• 13:38Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Be an example. But what are some tips from Stoicism on how to get the group to act and behave, to act as a team together?

• 13:48Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think these are actually more related than maybe some people think. First and foremost, the Stoics would say, what's in our control, what's not in our control? We control our individual behavior. So I tend to find a lot of people are like, how do I get my team to do this? How do I get them to do this? How do I get them to do this? And it's much less focused on what do I need to do? What am I not doing? How am I not creating, or how am I, or how am I failing to create the conditions that make that environment possible? A great book recommendation that I enjoyed recently, this is Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act. And he's basically the greatest record producer of all time, right?

• 14:30Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and, you know, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash. His point is, like, he's not, he's like, I'm not some, like, amazing guru that knows how to just tell people what to do. His point is that creativity is a product of environment and systems and vibe, you might say, to use the current word. His point is that it's something that ensues from having done the right thing, right? And I think so often as leaders, as parents, we expect certain things from people and we assume that our job as leaders

• 15:13Ryan Holiday?

  is to hold them accountable for not doing those things or rewarding them for doing the things. And then we think less about, you know, what's more in our control, which is what is the environment? What is the system? What is the structure that we are setting up that allows those things to naturally flourish, right? And so I'm not just talking about being an example. I'm just saying that how do we think about creating an environment in which the traits, the virtues or the outcomes we want to see is likely to ensue from that? So that's just a sort of a quick point I wanted to make. But I think for the Stokes, the idea that, look, we're all part of this large system, that we all have an individual job to do in this system.

• 15:58Ryan Holiday?

  And that when we focus on that, this is where teams really come together. So one of the things that we hear from Marcus that is a sort of an asset of him as a leader. He's talked about as a guy who can get great things out of flawed people. His point was that although Marcus was extraordinarily strict with himself, he was extremely tolerant of others, right? And so Marcus would see what was good in people and get more of that out of them. And then he would leave them to be who they want to be in their private life. He would leave them to be the, you know, he would accept that good comes with bad. And I think when you hear him talk in meditations

• 16:43Ryan Holiday?

  about putting up with frustrating people, I don't think he was just like talking about some belligerent drunk on the street or something. He's talking about his advisors or the, the, the, the, his generals, people who are really good at some things and probably frustratingly obnoxious about other things. And that I think his point is that leadership in teams is about meeting people where they are, finding the good in those people, encouraging that good, creating an environment where that flourishes. And then also setting up environments and relationships and, and systems that mitigates or compensates for the things those people are not good at. And that this is what creates a team and an environment that, that, that really flourishes.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Being a multiplier.

• 17:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes. Like, one of the questions that I ask my team the most is like, "What do you need from me? Like, what can I do that makes you better at your job?" Instead of going around and going, "Hey, why aren't you doing X? Hey, I don't like this. You know, hey, what about this?" Or, "Hey, great job, here's more money." I try to go like, "What do we, what do we need? What changes do we make?" Like, one of the questions, obviously, maybe this is a bit more my world than yours, which is like, "What is taking up an inordinate amount of your time, right? And how can I get rid of that?" Or I'll find out that someone is spending hours and hours doing something that I don't care about, that I don't think is important, but they're doing it because they think it's important to me, and it's not.

• 18:11Ryan Holiday?

  And the more that as a team, we communicate, we ask for help, we understand what people are good at and not good at, it allows us, I think, to create a more harmonious balance where the team thrives.