Jay Shetty On How to Think Like a Monk

On today’s podcast Ryan talks to influencer and author Jay Shetty about his former life as a monk, finding stillness in the modern world, and focusing on the process rather than the outcome. Jay Shetty is a British author and influencer with a mission to make wisdom go viral. His videos have reached over 4 billion viewers and he has a combined 20 million followers on social media. He is the host of the On Purpose podcast and released his bestselling book, Think Like a Monk, in September 2020. This episode is brought to you by GiveWell, the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. GiveWell’s team of researchers works countless hours to determine which charities make the most effective dollar-for-dollar contributions to the causes they support. Since 2010, GiveWell has helped over 50,000 donors donate over 500 million dollars to the most effective charities, leading to over 75,000 lives saved and millions more improved. Visit GiveWell.org/stoic and your first donation will be matched up to 100 dollars. This episode is also brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. Visit http://linkedin.com/stoic to get fifty dollars off your first job post. This episode is also brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan's podcast is one of the most interesting ones out there, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Jay Shetty:Homepage: https://jayshetty.me/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JayShettyIWInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jayshetty/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JayShettyIW/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbV60AGIHKz2xIGvbk0LLvgSee 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

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

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. It feels literally like an eternity ago now, but in fact, it was only June of 2019, maybe August of 2019. Anyways, the late summer of 2019, I think my publisher portfolio flew me out to Los Angeles to pre-record a bunch of interviews for my then-upcoming Stillness is the Key, which has now been out for over a year. But anyways, one of the interviews I went and did was with my friend Jay Shetty. I've known Jay forever. We used to go for walks whenever I'd come to New York. He interviewed me, I think way back, for the Daily Stoic launch, maybe even, for a couple of different online shows he did.

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  And while I was with Jay, he was telling me about his new book, which he'd sent me a new copy of. And so I interviewed him for the Daily Stoic Podcast, thinking that his book was going to be coming out in the spring of 2020. I'd run the interview on this show, blah, blah, blah. But life intervened, and Think Like a Monk's launch, which is a great book, Think Like a Monk's launch was postponed because of the pandemic, and then it came out this fall. And then we lost the file, and we couldn't do it. And I just got it from him. And so here is my interview with Jay Shetty, whose new book, Think Like a Monk, has been a bestseller. You've seen Jay everywhere. He's got millions of Instagram followers. He's a great follow. And he's been on Ellen and a bunch of other places. As it happens, not only had so much time passed,

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  but also the format of this show has changed. So originally, we were doing short, sort of 10, 15-minute episodes. Now we do these longer interviews. So what I set up with Jay is we have my interview with him at the front, and then we have a chunk of his interview with me at the back. So this is a full Hour-long episode, but it's more like a conversation because it's two people talking. I interview him a little bit, he interviews me a little bit. And I'm excited to present this interview with Jay Shetty. You can check out Think Like a Monk. You can follow him at Jay Shetty on pretty much all the social platforms. And I hope you like this one. I hope nothing feels too dated. It feels, you know, so much has transpired in the world since we recorded that. But here we go.

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  I'm here with Jay Shetty, who's probably done more to popularize ancient wisdom and philosophy and spiritual insights than basically anyone. You're a master of Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and all that. My question for you, so your book is Think Like a Monk. What is the difference between how a monk thinks and like, do you know Steven Pressfield?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I don't know him personally, but I know who he is, yeah.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  He has this idea there's like amateur thinking and professional thinking, right? And he has different, like, a professional artist thinks this way and amateur artist thinks this way. But like, how does a monk think and how does a not monk think? Can you?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So first of all, thanks for doing this, Ryan. I really appreciate it. And I'm happy to talk with you. I'm a big fan of your book. So it's always nice to talk books with someone who's deeply into books. For me, it's the difference that monks see as the monk mind and the monkey mind.

• 3:32Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  So the monkey mind is considered to the part of our minds that is like jumping from branch to branch and just being distracted by different fruits on every tree.

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Whereas the monk mind is focused, intentional, and aware at all times. The monkey mind is looking at selfish desires and greedy desires of hoarding.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And finding its own little corner just to store all its stuff. Whereas the monk mind is looking at service and selflessness and giving. The monkey mind is fascinated by comparison, complaining and criticism.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Like, oh, like, what's the latest gossip?

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  And how do I, like, how do I make myself feel better or worse based on everyone else?

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Whereas the monk mind is finding significance in its own identity. So those are just some of the broad differences. Is you've seen the monk and the monkey mind. And the monkey mind is something I think we all experience every day. And and it's there when the when we're on our way to work. It's there when we're scrolling through Instagram. It's there when you're talking to your partner or you're dinner with another couple.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And so that monkey mind is something we're very aware of. But when I wrote this book, I wanted to share the monk mind because I wanted to share the the alternative.

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  The antidote.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  For in the Stoics, the distinction is between the wise man and the fool. Right. And there's like the sage and the idiot, basically.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Not that not that you're not that the fool is incapable. The fool might be very successful, but they're motivated and thinking about the wrong thing. Right. A person might be in the sway of their monkey mind, but could be a billionaire or a, you know, a celebrity or whatever. But so I've got to imagine like what separates the monk from the monkey mind is the training.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  And you actually trained to be a monk. Like, talk to me about like that training.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Like, I didn't just dive into it. I'd been spending a lot of my summer vacations and holidays between the ages of eighteen to twenty two, living in an ashram in India because I got fascinated by the lifestyle.

• 5:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  And when I went on to be a monk myself between age twenty two to twenty five, it was the opposite of anything I've ever done.

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Like, you know, you grow up as a teenager, you're waking up at whatever nine, ten a.m. I'm waking up at four a.m.

• 5:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  As a teenager, you always want branded clothes or nice stuff.

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  I've got two sets of clothes, like you wear one, you wash one. You have a bedroom growing up as a teenager. Mine was covered in posters of rappers and athletes that I loved. I'm now living out of a gym locker.

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Like, all my possessions fit into a gym locker. So from an external point of view, it's a complete the antithesis of the life I'd grown up in. And what I loved about it was that I started challenging myself around how I lived very early on.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  And the test or the hypothesis I had was, can I be happy?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  With less, both physically and internally. And the answer from the test was yes.

• 6:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  But what was interesting about the training is that it also made me better when now I do have.

• 6:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And that's what I wanted to share with people. That's why the book's called Think Like A Monk, Not Live Like A Monk.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Because I'm not expecting anyone to read the book and then give up all their possessions and live with nothing, but I'm actually saying that this mindset has actually allowed me to be more grateful with what I do have. It's allowed me to be a better user of what I do have.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  And a better advocate for it. And so I don't think I would have had that ability had I not been trained.

• 6:59Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's one of the things that's interesting to me about your story and I think ties you maybe more in the Stoic tradition. Like, this isn't a totally fair, it's sort of a straw man argument I do, but I go like, look, the monk is in the ashram in India or the monastery in the hills of Japan or whatever it is, whereas the Stoic is like the man in the marketplace, or it's, you know, it's the female CEO, it's the activist, it's the philosopher in action. And so I'm interested in, so you went there, but then you came back and now you're here out in the world, right?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  Do you, is to you, is that what philosophy is? Is this, or is it the retreat? Do you know what I mean?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the way I describe it is, my three years of living as a monk was like being at school, and the last seven years since I've left have been the exam. And so I see that as training, as school, as, and I think that's the life school that we all miss.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  And so for me, I was fortunate enough to get the life school in the way that I'm seeing it. And then the last seven years, the reason why I'm writing this book now is, I've had to test everything.

• 8:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And believe me, there were moments when I came back and I was like, wow, I just wasted three years of my life.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Like, I missed out on my career, I missed out on a great resume, I missed out on relationships, and that's how I felt when I came back.

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  But then it was almost like my monk training kicked back in again. I was like, okay, let me apply all these teachings. And when I started applying them in reality, I was like, oh, wow, they work like these things work in the real world.

• 8:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And that's, that's where my confidence comes from. And I'm, I'm with you. I think philosophy is practical philosophy and application.

• 8:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  This, what I'm living now is everything I trained for. It's like, it's like the

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  It's almost easier to do it in the ashram because you're

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. And it's like the workshop and the battlefield, like, like, you know, the, the archer or the sword fighter or whatever it is, like, they're, they're training every single day. But it's like when they go on the battlefield, that's when all their training is useful.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  And, and so for me, that's how I see it, whether you're an athlete and you're training five days a week, but you know, it's training.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  You know, if you miss the shot, it doesn't matter.

• 9:04Ryan Holiday?

  It's not real.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  It's not real. And so for me, when I left and now I put it under practice, I'm like, oh, it works. It's real.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  So I know you, sometimes I'll see you quote or tweet from the Stoics. I'm just curious, like, what is your relationship with the philosophy? You think about it all? There are stories you like, quotes you like?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  From Stoicism?

• 9:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I really, I think I've learned more about it through you. And, and that's why I said that I, I've loved your work so much. And I was always fascinated by Socrates and Aristotle mainly, I think I've quoted them the most. Plato's Republic was fascinating. And I remember diving deep into that when I saw what was happening politically, and I'm not political at all, but just looking at it from that perspective was fascinating. The BBC did an incredible documentary piece on it.

• 9:44Ryan Holiday?

  Oh.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Around in 2016.

• 9:46Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  And it breaks down how each one of the five pillars of Plato's Republic transpire into what we're seeing today.

• 9:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  And so for me, it was again, I've just always been fascinated by different philosophies.

• 9:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  On life, but based, I, I think what really fascinates me is how there is so much stuff that's been said for so many years.

• 10:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And we think we need something new.

• 10:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And we just want to be fascinated with the new. And, and I quote Ivan Pavlov, but I think Martin Luther King said something similar around, if you want a new idea, read an old book.

• 10:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  And, and so for me, that's where my fascination comes from is what are the parallels between timeless wisdom? And I call it timeless because it's not ancient. It, it applies now, everything you know. And whether it's 2,000 years old Stoic, or whether it's 5,000 years old Vedic.

• 10:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  It's still relevant.

• 10:31Ryan Holiday?

  Sure, because people are people.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Because people are people. And our problems haven't changed in the deepest level of it. We still experience loss. We still experience fear. We still experience anxiety. We still, in different ways, but it's the same thing. And And for me, what I love is finding the parallels between timeless wisdom and modern science.

• 10:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  That's kind of where I get my personal kick.

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. No, no, that makes sense.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and all the studies, and the book's full of them, but you know, the studies that I've looked at show how monks' brains are the happiest brains on the planet.

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  And to me, I was just like, how have we missed this?

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  And because their brain is the happiest, the brain, we know, can be trained in a certain way through practices and techniques. And so it's like, if we could get those out to everyone, imagine if everyone could think like a monk, how cool would it be?

• 11:20Ryan Holiday?

  Isn't it crazy how, like, whether it's a monk, or a philosopher, or a priest, or a saint, or, you know, whatever it is, they're all kind of this, like Gandhi, Socrates, Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Dalai Lama.

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, they're the same, unfortunately, they're mostly guys, right? It's been a man's world for most of it. But like, they're this, that's the same dude.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:44Ryan Holiday?

  They're all bald, they're all small, they're all frail, do you know what I mean? Like, they're, but they have the, fundamentally, though, what they mostly have is the same energy.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, and the same stillness.

• 11:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  You know, like your book, and the same, the same presence.

• 11:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  And at least what I learned from my teachers was this principle of yukta veeragya, which means real renunciation, or that real renun- I remember when I became a monk and I gave everything up and I put my robes on for the first time and I was thinking, I'm so detached. Like, I felt like that. I was like, oh, I'm so detached. Like, I gave up the life that everyone has in London and, you know, all the ego was there. And I asked one of my teachers, I was like, what's the definition of renunciation? And I was hoping he was gonna say like, you know.

• 12:27Ryan Holiday?

  You did it.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did. And, and he says to me, he says, he says, "Real renunciation is using everything for a higher purpose." So it's not actually getting rid of it. So, you know, there's a, there's a famous verse that I quote, and it's, "Detachment doesn't mean that you own nothing."

• 12:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Detachment means that nothing owns you.

• 12:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  And, and that's what it means, that if you're using everything you have for a higher purpose, then it doesn't own you anymore, because it's not your soul focus. So for me- My teachers, the way they were teaching us was always that this is a mindset that you can live anywhere and everywhere.

• 13:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  And it's not bound by the physical walls of the ashram.

• 13:06Ryan Holiday?

  One of my favorite things from Seneca, he goes like, sure, using like cheap dishes is impressive, right? He's like, but what's actually maybe more impressive is using expensive dishes as if they are cheap dishes. Right? Like, like not being attached. Like, it's easy to go like, okay, I just use paper plates. Like, I don't care. But can you tell yourself, oh, this, you know, expensive family dish, or this gift that you got, or, you know, the fact that you could afford fine china is just as worthless as the paper plate. And that's just as fragile. And that, you know, that ties into the Zen, like, it's already broken.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 13:41Ryan Holiday?

  Can you treat it, any of it, whether it's nice or not nice, as not yours, as fleeting, as ephemeral? Whether you're Stoic or Zen, that's what you're trying to get.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Totally, exactly. And it was always about how, it's not about how much you give, it's about how much you're holding back.

• 13:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  So it's not like, oh, I'm giving up all of this.

• 13:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  But it's like, how much are you still holding back?

• 14:01Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Which could just be ego.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 14:04Ryan Holiday?

  Or sense of superiority.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 14:06Ryan Holiday?

  So. So, last question for you, because I think we are on the same road here.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:10Ryan Holiday?

  I love your slogan of, like, your mission is to make wisdom go viral.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:16Ryan Holiday?

  I guess, you know, a pure philosopher might be like, oh, that, that, wisdom is viral. It doesn't need to be very, like, talk to me about using these, like, modern tools to spread ancient ideas.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just, you know, if I'm completely honest, when I started, there was no strategy. There was no idea of what it was gonna be. I thought I was gonna work a full-time corporate job when I came back, and I'd make videos on the evenings and weekends, and hopefully that'd help people.

• 14:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  And the way I saw them helping people was just, I believed that people wanted to and were having deep conversations. And they were already there, but I wanted to make it more... Accessible and relevant for people to have anywhere and everywhere. So people could send one of my videos to someone and be like, we were just talking about this.

• 14:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And they could find that affinity in something external that they don't get to. They could find in books, but I wasn't seeing that. And I was always looking at movies and media and how they brought about cultural shifts.

• 15:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  But because movies were fiction.

• 15:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  No one took them seriously enough.

• 15:14Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  So The Matrix, for example, we know it's got a ton of spiritual principles behind it. You look at The Pursuit of Happiness, it's got a ton of, and that's a real story, but so many good, even Marvel Universe, it's got phenomenal lessons.

• 15:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  But it's fiction.

• 15:26Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And so we don't take anything from it. So my point was, how could we create media that allows people to have greater access and relevancy? And I think I read a, I read a statistic that year that was like, more people own a phone than a toothbrush. And so I was like, first of all, we should get more toothbrushes.

• 15:42Ryan Holiday?

  That's gross.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Second of all, how do we get more people who have phones to have access to this? Even if they don't have the money, they don't have the parenting, or they don't have the access? How can we make sure that every kid out there has an opportunity to find this?

• 15:55Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that idea about sort of renunciation, what's true renunciation? To me, there's always been something deeply unphilosophical about this like elitism about philosophy and information. It's like, look, not everyone has time to go read a 3,000-page philosophy book with a bunch of big words that, by the way, no one taught them to understand. And like, if they want to start with Instagram posts, like, not only am I not going to fault them, I'm going to congratulate them and encourage them for that to be the first step in a long journey. And hopefully, they will go to the original text and will dive deeper.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Totally. And I think that's what you've done so beautifully. And, you know, that's, that's been my goal is like, I've read all the, I've had such a fortune of being, and I was that kid, right? Like, for me, I'm, I'm creating for the kid that I was.

• 16:47Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  So I was 18 years old, I wasn't spiritual.

• 16:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  I wasn't philosophical.

• 16:52Ryan Holiday?

  You were on the computer.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was on a computer and, and I was fortunate enough to meet monks.

• 16:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Like, how many people get to meet monks?

• 16:58Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  And my point is the same with you. How many of us will ever meet a Stoic?

• 17:02Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Right? Or met a Stoic? And it's like, I feel we need to give people an opportunity to be exposed

• 17:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  to a broad variety of thoughts and people

• 17:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  so that people can make good decisions for themselves.

• 17:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Because right now on social media, if we weren't doing that, they're only exposed

• 17:19Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  to a certain archetype.

• 17:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  And to me, I'm like, well, that's limiting.

• 17:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Because now you don't have, like, if I never met a monk, I would never have wanted to be a monk.

• 17:27Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  I don't know who introduced you to Stoicism.

• 17:28Ryan Holiday?

  Dr. Drew.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Right, okay, so there you go. It's like, if you'd never got introduced, I wonder what you'd be doing today.

• 17:34Ryan Holiday?

  No, not this.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so for my point is like, what if you were only exposed to the same five things that everyone are exposed to?

• 17:42Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  What does that create? And so for me, I'm writing and creating for the person that I was.

• 17:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  And I want to make wisdom go viral because I think it's everyone's right to have access to it.

• 17:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  And in the same way, as you said, I don't think it should be an elitist pursuit.

• 17:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think you gotta meet people where they are.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 18:01Ryan Holiday?

  And, and also, there's this, like, every once in a while, you see these sort of snooty trend pieces about like, "Look at these losers in the Silicon Valley, like, you know, studying philosophy," or, you know, like, "Buddhism is for, you know, like, white ladies in yoga pants," or whatever, like, and it's like, I get, I get that there is some perversion of it, or maybe some people are using it for the wrong reasons, but it's like, isn't that better than, like, what would you rather them be doing?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah. I get asked that a lot. People are like, "Don't you think people are using a watered-down version?" And I'm like, you know what, if it improves people's lives

• 18:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  and it gets them a step closer?

• 18:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  I'm good with that.

• 18:36Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I, I don't, I, who am I to decide how deep they should go and?

• 18:41Ryan Holiday?

  It's like vaping is not good, but it's better than cigarettes?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 18:44Ryan Holiday?

  So let's, let's, you know, and nicotine gum is better than vaping?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:47Ryan Holiday?

  Let's work people towards where we want them to go.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Totally. And let's not, you know, let's not project our holier-than-thou and being better than, like, you know, what we're talking about. Like, I don't, I don't think I'm better for knowing or having access to this. I feel fortunate.

• 19:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I'm grateful.

• 19:04Ryan Holiday?

  And you want to pay it forward.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 19:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 19:06Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, that's awesome. All right, so tell people where they can find the book and where they can follow you.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Come and find me on ThinkLikeAMonkBook.com. We have access all over for audiobooks, which I'm reading as well, which I can't wait to. I'm doing it this week.

• 19:18Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, it's brutal, man. Get ready.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I've got it for the next week. And, and of course, the, the book as well. So ThinkLikeAMonkBook.com, and you can find me on Instagram at JShetty.

• 19:28Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Welcome to the show, Ryan Holiday.

• 19:35Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for having me. I wish we could be walking.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I know. You know, I've thought about that many times. Like, could you do a good interview walking?

• 19:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  And I think the audio police would be on my case. And they'd be like, Jay, the audio is gonna be terrible.

• 19:49Ryan Holiday?

  You can't control the environment, which would be bad. But like, it is ironic that I find sort of the most stillness like in movement. You know, so like for me, like I do all my phone calls walking. So if I have to do a phone call, someone I walk, when we met in New York that time, we're like, why would we sit here? We could go for, I like to go outside, you get moving. And then weirdly, it slows the, I think it turns off parts of the mind. And then it focuses other parts of the mind. So like somehow the body moving creates a kind of an inner stillness that I, that I love.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  That's fascinating. What does stillness mean to you? Like, because that already is like, you're not thinking about stillness in.

• 20:33Ryan Holiday?

  It's not just this.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  It's not just a gross form of stillness, like a physical. What is stillness to you?

• 20:38Ryan Holiday?

  To me, it's when everything kind of slows down. When you eliminate what's extraneous, when you become sort of fully present in whatever it is that you're doing. And you have the ability to sort of direct your thoughts, direct your body, direct your sort of spirits and emotions, rather than kind of be directed by them. So like, what's interesting is I think when you think about the really great people that you admire, whether they're sort of spiritually great or athletically great or creatively great, I think what they all share is some kind of stillness. There's like, even if they're really active, there's something about them that is really deep.

• 21:20Ryan Holiday?

  Do you know? And, and so the book and sort of what I, where I've tried to go in my life more recently is like, how do you, how do you cultivate that? How do you create that? How do you create space for that? Cause I think it's where all the, all the good stuff comes from.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. No, that's, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, when you're talking about stillness though, you're a dad too.

• 21:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And, and I'm intrigued by how the process of stillness, I'm not a dad yet. So I'm asking as, as early coaching. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm married, so I, you know, hopefully it will happen at some point, but. You know, what's the latest adventure you went on with your son or where you see stillness in that relationship?

• 21:58Ryan Holiday?

  So that's actually like every morning we get up. My kids like do not sleep well, so we get up early. I take them outside and we go for a walk while my wife catches up on sleep. And so that walk is like a huge part of the routine for us. My thing is I don't take a phone on it, so I'm not, I'm not doing anything but that. And we're outside and we like experience nature. We see things, you know, they sing, we talk. And it, what's interesting to me is like how much crazier the day is if we don't do that. Like even though they're not, so it's not actually them being tired because they're not walking. I'm walking, but the, it somehow ripples through the day if we don't have that kind

• 22:43Ryan Holiday?

  of centering experience. I think there's something too about like getting up early. That's really great. Getting outside, that's great. But you kind of realize that I think one of, one of the weird things about being a parent is like, you think it's going to be doing all these activities, right? It's all the, it's like you're doing, but it's actually, it's just like the being there that is parenting. So it's like, oh, we're just gonna play in the dirt for the next hour. And we, by we, I mean like you're going to do it. I just have to sit here and let you do that. And so it's kind of, it's kind of humbling because you think it's going to be this active thing that you're in charge of, but really it's, it's much more about you sort of allowing

• 23:23Ryan Holiday?

  and encouraging and participating and sort of protecting than it is, you know, planning and organizing.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. No, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And, and you talk there about how you're not trying to be distracted at the time.

• 23:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  And, and I know you've talked about like not using your phone for the first 30 minutes of the day.

• 23:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's part of my thing is like, I, I started with 10 minutes and I worked my, like it could be now, I might say I wake up at six, I might not touch my phone till 11 or 12. Like it's, it's, the point is it's, it's not that the phone is bad and it's not even that the things inside the phone are bad. It's that I want to be in control rather than be controlled by the technology. So just the amount of people I know that it's like. What Donald Trump tweeted while they were sleeping is determining the caliber of their day or the quality of their day. And, and it's like, let's say that's too politically charged. It's just like that email that came in while they were sleeping, they didn't actually need to see until later, until they, so, so for me, it's like, cause I write,

• 24:30Ryan Holiday?

  it's about protecting the space to do the writing. So it's like, I want to go for the walk. I want to do the journaling. I want to get in the right headspace and then I want to go into the writing. What I don't want is, you know, some email from my accountant or email from my publisher or email from random hater who I, you know, don't even know how they got my email. I don't want that to get in my head and be like, actually, no, all the work, all the preparation, all the things you should be thinking about, that's out the window because so and so messed up or so and so said, you're an asshole or whatever it is. Like you don't, you have to protect that space. And look, it'd be wonderful if you could get to a place where nothing that anyone said, you know, had a,

• 25:13Ryan Holiday?

  had an impact on you, you could tune it out. This is not the reality. So I'd rather create an environment that allows me to, you know, to, to be focused.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a hundred percent with you. And that's amazing that you've been able to do it from, cause I wake up around six too. And I've trained myself to not look at my phone until about eight 15 when I go to the gym.

• 25:31Ryan Holiday?

  But those two and a half hours is really great.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a great time. That's like when I'm meditating, it's when I'm doing gratitude. It's when I'm eight 15 is when I go to the gym. So it's like only on my walk down to the gym. But I found that whenever I break that rule, and, and of course I still have days where I break that rule and I'll wake up and I wake up a bit late and I look at my phone at like, say seven.

• 25:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  It's like, I could waste two hours.

• 25:55Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Being reactive in bed. And now it's like my meditation's gonna happen later. My, my exercise regime may not happen that day. And, and the, the amount of time it consumes as well.

• 26:05Ryan Holiday?

  And it doesn't just have to be bad things, right? I, I remember I was, I was in LA when Stillness came out. And so the, the way it works is, is, and you'll experience this. And so your book comes out and then there's a week on sale and then basically like they're tallying the sales on Monday and Tuesday. And then Wednesday, you get the numbers and that's when you find out about the New York Times list. And congrats. Thank you. But this is that story, right? So, so like I was, I woke up because I was traveling, I couldn't use like, there was no alarm clock. So I had to use my phone as the alarm clock. So it makes it harder to not check your phone when it's literally, you have to turn it off to wake up. And so like, you know, I woke up at the normal time and my plan was to go swimming, but I could

• 26:46Ryan Holiday?

  see a bunch of text messages from my agent and from my publisher that were, you know, like sitting on the home screen. And so it was like, okay, the rule is you don't use the phone.

• 27:00Ryan Holiday?

  From what I knew, it was, it was heading in the right direction. So it's like, it's probably good news, right? But I had to sort of consciously go like, actually, no, like I want, I want to exist for the next hour or two hours of the workout and the journaling and the writing I want to do for the day as if that reality, like apart from that reality, in a universe where there's like Schrodinger's cat, like where you don't know if it's alive or dead, you don't know if the news is good or bad. Like I just want to exist for two hours more not knowing either way. And so it was like, I'm not going to check in, I'm going to go do the thing because as soon as I got the good news, and it was great news that we debuted at number one, we sold

• 27:44Ryan Holiday?

  more copies than we thought, but it was like, in a weird way, the day was shot, even if it'd been, it was shot just as much as it being good as it would have been if it was bad because you're like celebrating or excited, you want to know this or that. And like, I don't, the whole point is that you don't wake up and be reactive. You should wake up and be intentional and do what it is that you want to do for the day. Then once that's over, I'm fine to be reactive from noon to five. You know what I mean? Like, once I've, once I've gotten the important thing done, fine to be reactive, but I don't want to be reactive if it comes at the expense of. The daily practices that I have.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:24Ryan Holiday?

  To me, that's what stillness is actually about.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the benefit, right? Because a lot of people may listen to that and be like, well, Ryan, that means you just don't want to celebrate and you can't be happy for yourself.

• 28:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  You know, what's your issue with like just having a moment?

• 28:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  You work so hard, but actually what you're saying is the benefit is you can be happy after, but you still want to create that space in your mind where you get to exist, be intentional, and basically train your mind out of being reactive. Because whether your mind is being reactively good or reactively bad.

• 28:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  You're still training your mind to be reactive.

• 28:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, it's in a way, it's like people are like, okay, I'm not going to read the comments on my video because they're negative or whatever. Right? We get why that's bad. But then what will happen also is like you post something and it blows up. You can waste a whole day refreshing, just take like, just mainlining the ego.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:14Ryan Holiday?

  And, and like, sure, there are some days where you should do that. Or, you know, like you do that every once in a while. It's not like the worst thing in the world. It's like having a soda or something. But you realize you could lose a whole day. And, and so it's like, wait, the, the, the reward for my success in this instance is that I'm not doing the thing that I actually love doing. Like, I didn't become a writer so I can refresh things, you know? I didn't become a writer so I could count the likes or the comments. I became a writer because I genuinely enjoy writing.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:47Ryan Holiday?

  And so I actually, you want to see anything that deprives you of the chance to do that as, like, I think it's like, you know, Bob Dylan didn't want to go accept his Nobel Prize thing. It's like, yeah, I totally get that. Like, it's not that he doesn't want it. It's that it's like, he doesn't want to fly and waste a whole day doing something that he didn't try to get in the first place.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:07Ryan Holiday?

  That's the, the highest level of doing it and probably more discipline than I have. But like, I think early in your career, you think like doing interviews is going to be awesome. Getting attention is going to be awesome. You know, like seeing yourself hit number one is going to be awesome. And then if you actually get to the right place about it, you see those things as like distractions from what you actually want to be doing.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  That's powerful. That's powerful using the word distraction from what you want to be doing.

• 30:36Ryan Holiday?

  I read this thing, this like sort of obituary of Kobe Bryant and they were saying like this ESPN reporter was saying like sort of two weeks, two or three weeks before he died, she had texted him to say like, "Hey, I want to interview you for this story." And like on the one hand, yeah, the reason you want to become the world's best at whatever it is you do is to be interviewed. You want to see yourself on ESPN. And he has shoe deals and social media followers and things that would benefit from being in the media. And his response was like, he texted her back, he's like, "Can't, my girls are keeping me busy. Like hit me up some other time." And first off, the discipline that takes normally is incredible. But I'm so touched by the idea that like he didn't know how much time he had left.

• 31:20Ryan Holiday?

  And so, and he didn't, he doesn't control that, right? Like he doesn't control the fact that he's about to be deprived of years of life, but he does control whether he's going to waste 15 minutes or not. And he chose in that moment to not waste it. And he gave that time to the people that he loved. And I'm so, I'm so touched by that. I think, to me, that's like his final performance, right? Like, and so I try to think about that always. And I've thought about it for a long time, but I'm always looking for examples of like that sort of powerful no, or that, you know, ability. I was, I called Robert Greene this morning. It was been sort of my mentor for a long time.

• 32:01Ryan Holiday?

  And I was like, Robert, I'm like driving by your house on my way to this thing. Do you want me to stop by and say hello? And he was like, "I'm doing my work right now. Let's see each other later." I'm like, like, you could be insulted by that, but actually I was like, I was like, "Oh, my God, this is, this is how, this is what it takes to be great." Do you know what I mean? And like, so in a weird way, I'm, not only was I not hurt, I was like, "That's, that's, that's professionalism." Do you know what I mean? Like, but it, because it's easier to say yes. It's easy to be like, "Oh, come over." Like, "Oh, turn on the TV," or, "Oh..." You know, whatever. It's easy to say yes. It's hard to say no.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. There was another interview. You remind me of that with Kobe Bryant. And I think it was one of his last interviews as well. Can't remember what channel it was on, but he was asked like to describe with one word, a few things in his life. And so they asked him like basketball. He says love and LA, and he says home. And then they ask him retirement.

• 33:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  And he says peace.

• 33:02Ryan Holiday?

  Ooh.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And, and you know, it's, it's an amazing thing. And I was fortunate enough to interview Kobe Bryant last year. And even when you were with him, he was in such a peaceful, happy space in retirement, which for most athletes.

• 33:17Ryan Holiday?

  It's the opposite.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  It's the opposite, right? It's like full of anxiety. So you're trying to figure out your identity again and who you are and your ego and everything. Whereas for him, he was just totally like happy storytelling and writing and like, funnily enough, like in this storytelling world.

• 33:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And I'm, I like basketball. I don't know everything about it. So we ended up talking for an hour about storytelling.

• 33:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Because that's what he was doing now. And he was so satisfied with that being his purpose.

• 33:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  And anyway, it's just when someone says peace in retirement, you're like, wow, like that, you know, but stillness is the key.

• 33:49Ryan Holiday?

  No, no.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  I was just like, wow, there's so much.

• 33:51Ryan Holiday?

  You wish everyone could have that. And, and I think the other thing, you might go like, okay, how many years of not peace versus how many years of peace?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:58Ryan Holiday?

  But that it's actually like what the, what the sort of philosophers would say east and west is like, one minute of it is everything. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you could experience it for one minute, you've experienced it for eternity.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:11Ryan Holiday?

  You know, and, and so to get there at 40 is impressive. To get there at all is impressive. And, and I think the, you know, the sort of stoic practice of memento mori, where actually a memento mori ring.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  You give me the coin.

• 34:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  I have it up.

• 34:27Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, you do?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:28Ryan Holiday?

  So I started wearing this ring too, because I want to like sort of touch it always. But yeah, the, the idea of like death looming over all of it should put some urgency on it. Not like, oh, I have to, like, people go, oh yeah, when I retire, when I'm 60, I'll get to do that. But like, you get hit by a bus, you know, your helicopter could crash, like get cancer, you know, like you're, the idea that death is, death should be this sort of urgent thing reminding you not to take the future for granted. And that like, you've got to be working towards that stillness or that peace or that focus or don't defer the work that you have to do. Because like you don't know you're gonna get to come back to it.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, with all of these teachings, like obviously stoicism has been something that you've been helping all of us understand. And I love it. I absolutely love it. But from that, which of the teachings in this book has kind of like, was there a teaching that almost surprised you or took you longer to wrap your head around as you've been writing all these books? Like, that's kind of come to the fore in this one?

• 35:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Something you didn't believe in straight away, but kind of like, you know?

• 35:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, one of the things I struggled with a little bit more in the book that I, like, I wanted to tackle things that made me uncomfortable. And, and so like, I've probably been an atheist since, I don't know, high school, late high school.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  One high power.

• 35:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And so, and I knew that chapter would be controversial and like, like I knew it pissed people off. And it did piss people off. Like, I was looking the other day, like, the first review on Amazon is some person who was like triggered by the fact that I was talking about this thing. And what I'm interested in is like, things that are working for people, right? And it's like, it's hard not to look back at history and not see that pretty much everyone believed in some kind of higher, like, like atheism is the exception, not the rule. And I was in Budapest a couple of months ago. And I was walking by this church and there were some like classical music concert and I hate classical music, but I had like,

• 36:32Ryan Holiday?

  and I just went in and I sat and I watched this, like a sort of classical concert. They were singing in Latin in a like a Catholic, you know, like a 500 year old Catholic church or something. And, you know, the acoustics were perfect. Like, I understood none of it. But I was just like, this experience, like this experience is what people have been having for thousands of years. Like, what is it that's working for them? Why, you know, and why am I closing myself off to it? So didn't like, I'm still like on that path, I think, but I've certainly moved from like atheist, which is like, you know, there's no God, to agnostic, which is like, I don't know, and sort of an openness to larger experiences. So I think.

• 37:20Ryan Holiday?

  Again, like, I think the theme in my book is like, what if smarter, wiser people than me a long time ago figured out? And let me try to articulate that in a modern context. And so that was certainly a big one for me.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I love that. And I just love how open you are, because I've always said that to people. I'm like, with any belief, it's like, if someone was able to present to me a better, stronger case

• 37:45Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  for a new set of beliefs that are timeless and universal in application.

• 37:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  I would adopt them.

• 37:53Ryan Holiday?

  You should.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  You should, yeah, like, as a genuine seeker of what works, what is fascinating, and what actually has an impact versus a fad or a trend that may not have that longevity.

• 38:04Ryan Holiday?

  Well, there's one of my favorite quotes from Epictetus is like, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. And so actually, I feel like on the path towards wisdom of learning, you shouldn't be becoming more certain in your beliefs. You should actually become less certain and more open, right? And so I think it was sort of realizing, oh, this atheism is because I read a Richard Dawkins book when I was 19, which was great. And I'm glad I read it because it made me question things I'd accepted as a child. But that if I'm just stuck there, I'm not, I'm not getting better, I'm not learning, and I'm no better than people I might be criticizing for their own, you know, not thought out beliefs. And so, like, I think one of the things I've experienced as I've gotten older, as I've

• 38:47Ryan Holiday?

  read more, as I've become successful, is like, is just a kind of a, an openness and a, like, less rigidity in my beliefs. And, and I think that's a theme in the Stoics, is just this idea of like, yeah, if someone can prove that you might be wrong about something, or get you to consider some question that you previously thought you had the answer to, they're doing you a huge favor.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:11Ryan Holiday?

  You know, even if they're knocking down a whole structure that you've been living your life, they're doing you a favor because like, that was built on unsteady ground.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:21Ryan Holiday?

  And so, yeah, it like, seeking that out, embracing it, appreciating it, not, not presenting it, not reacting against it has been, I think, I think that's an important practice.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. That's beautifully said. Do you think it's in a... What I find fascinating about all of this is when you're an early... Whether it's an early atheist, theist, early adopter of a a new diet, or whatever it is, we develop this sort of like ego around being this evangelical ambassador of it. And you're like, you know, you're like putting everyone in a place, trying to school everyone. Is that coming from what would be the Stoic or the wisdom answer from? Because for me, it's like, it's almost like a protective mechanism. It's like what you're saying to others is what you want to say to yourself.

• 40:07Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  So it's like if I've just started waking up at 6:00 AM, I'm now the biggest proponent of like, "You wake up at 7:00? Like, oh, you're slacking, right?" "You don't wake up till 6:30?" Or if someone wakes up at 4:00, you're like, "Oh, no, that's too early." Because you become this false ambassador. Tell me a bit about your thought process around that ego of that.

• 40:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. It's like a projection. Like, you're so insecure about it. You gotta convince other people about it. So then you're... No, and I think as a, as like a public figure, someone who writes, you're definitely more prone to that. Like, when I look back at my early writing, the one thing that invariably makes me cringe is like how certain I was about stuff that I'd like literally just learned about, you know? Like, it's not like I'd known this to be true for 30 years and then I was writing about it. It was like, literally like I'd heard about this like the day before. And that's the stuff that never ages well.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:58Ryan Holiday?

  I heard this great expression, like, "It ages like milk," you know? That certainty ages so badly. And like, one of the weird things, like when I look at Obstacle, Ego, and Stillness is like, okay, Obstacle's like 50,000 words, Ego's like 55, and let's say Stillness is 60, or something like that. And, and I was like, are these books getting longer because like I'm just more full of myself? Or actually, no. It's like now when I read back Obstacle, I think one of the reasons it works and it's so clear is that I'm saying things very emphatically, very clearly, but also with no nuance. You know? And as I've gotten older, as I've experienced more, it's like, uh, it's more complicated than that.

• 41:40Ryan Holiday?

  And so actually, it's like, as I've gotten, as I've gone out in my career, I'm less comfortable saying things in black and white terms. I want to... It's not that I'm hedging, but, but that I'm, I'm just not gonna say that this is... I'm not going to say this with no equivocation because you can't actually know that.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:01Ryan Holiday?

  And that, and that, again, like emails I've gotten are things that it's like, oh, you know what? Like, I may have, I didn't consider what it's like to be, you know, a single mom with three kids. And that maybe it's not, it's easy for them to get up at 6:00 a.m. or whatever it is. Like, you just realize that you're being flipped because your experience is limited. And so I think as I've gone older, gone on and gotten older, I'm, negative capability. It's from Keats, I think. And it's the idea that like genius or real intelligence is the ability to hold opposing ideas in your head at the same time.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:33Ryan Holiday?

  That you don't actually have to simplify things down. You don't have to make them black and white. You can embrace like paradoxes.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:41Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Like, people will go like, oh, you know, in this chapter, you're saying this, but over here, you're saying this. That's a contradiction. It's like, welcome to the universe where sometimes you have to do this.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:52Ryan Holiday?

  And sometimes the opposite is what's called for.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, in my book, you've reminded me of something for me. It's like, I talk about the need for routine and spontaneity.

• 43:01Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  And, and it's like, in one sense, and I remember tackling it when I was writing, because I was like, oh, wait a minute. And I'm like, no, but I believe in both.

• 43:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  And I, and I believe one leads to the other.

• 43:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  And, and I believe that there is a space for both. And I, I mean, encouraging people in my own way to embrace polarities more.

• 43:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Because I feel like we're always like, what is the one way to show this? And I'm like, well, sometimes I can be affectionate, but sometimes you've got to be assertive. And sometimes you've got to be this and that. It's like, you don't have to be one thing all of the time.

• 43:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think I talked about this in obstacle, like Arthur Ashe, his sort of motto is like physically tight, mentally loose. And, and so it's like, isn't that a contradiction? Actually, no, that they, they fuel and feed each other. And, you know, the, the world is complicated. I think that's definitely something that the Eastern philosophers get better, is that you're sort of embracing paradoxes and nonsensical sayings. And like, like it, you're supposed to go, you're supposed to sit with that.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:57Ryan Holiday?

  And maybe even get comfortable with the fact that it. Is irresolvable. Maybe that's the lesson, you know, whereas like, people are like, no, what it like, because invariably in interviews, people go like, and what is the five, you know, step framework for overcoming obstacles? And I was like, there isn't one. There's no obstacle is the same. And, you know, no person is the same. I think what there are are fundamental principles or ideas that if you equip yourself with, it will become clear which to use in which situation. But yeah, people want, they want like a roadmap. And there's, there is no roadmap.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  No, exactly. Was that when you were writing the book, was there anything, was there in most, what was the most intriguing way someone finds stillness that you've experienced, even if not in the book, but people you've spoken to, like something that you were like, whoa, I didn't, like some, you know, skydiving or like whatever, like, how does that give stillness?

• 44:49Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm fascinated with Churchill and Churchill wrote a book called Painting as a Pastime. And I was like, what? Why would, first off, I don't think people think of Churchill as a writer, but that's how he made his living. Yeah. And, and you don't think like, Prime Minister, the guy that stands up to the Nazis, you're like, and he must have loved watercolors, right? But like, or I think he was more oil paints. But the, but the point is like, he has this nervous breakdown after the second, after the First World War, and his sister-in-law gives him her children's paint set and says like, hey, this might help you relax. And he'd always been ambitious, always had an insane work ethic, always been busy. And this was the first time

• 45:31Ryan Holiday?

  where he like, was doing something only for its own sake. And I was just in London and I went straight from Heathrow to Chartwell before my meeting, because I wanted to go see his painting studio. And you're like, oh, this is what kept this guy sane amidst incredible stress, fear, anxiety, responsibility, you know, people not doing what they're supposed to do. Like, he would paint. And, and so he would talk, he was like, the most important thing that a powerful person can have, he said, is like, one or two hobbies. It's like, what are your hobbies? And for him, it was painting and, and writing was sort of one of them. And it was, he had this, you know, Stayed in the countryside. It was like, it was the opposite of his work, basically,

• 46:16Ryan Holiday?

  right? And you have to have that. The prime minister, a generation or two before him, William Gladstone, was like, he had this big property, he would just go out and chop down trees. Like, he just liked chopping down trees with an axe. And like, it's, I live on a small farm outside Texas, and people, isn't that a lot of work? And it's like, it is. But it's the opposite of my actual work. And so it's actually very restorative. And, and so I think the power of hobbies is like, probably the thing I was most excited to write about.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And also, sometimes the power of like, I feel like, simple quote unquote, mundane tasks. Like, the, I remember, you know, when, when I lived as a monk, like, we did so many mundane tasks, like cleaning, or pot washing, or taking care of the farms, or cows, or whatever it was. And it was like, a lot of me, coming from London, and being educated and all the rest of it, was just like, this is such a waste of time. Like, I should be like, reading, or studying, or like, teaching, or like, changing the world. Like, that's, I've always been like that. But, but then I started to, and I was forced to do it, because they saw value in it. It wasn't just like, we need someone to clean stuff. It was like, no, there's value in it for you.

• 47:25Ryan Holiday?

  Right. There's like a Zen story, I tell in the book, I'm forgetting who it was, but these two students go to this Zen master, they visit him on his farm, and they're like, will you please show us the way of Zen? And he's like, yes, of course. Will you just open the farm for me this morning? Like, do all the farm chores? So, you know, they, they sort of muck the stables, and they, you know, milk the cows, or they, you know, they let the animals out. They just go through this whole process. As the sun is coming up, and they're going through it, and they come back, and they say, you know, like, master, we've opened the farm, like, what is Zen? And he just goes, like, that, that manual labor, that experience, being outside, experiencing nature, watching the sun come up, that is it. And that's that idea of like, chop wood, carry water, like, just do the

• 48:06Ryan Holiday?

  thing. One foot in front of the other, follow the steps. Don't try to make this into something, just appreciate it for what it is. It's really great. Like, yeah, fixing fences on my farm, going out to feed the cows, going on a walk, just... Watching the animals, like, that is the experience, right? And it's so the opposite of sitting at your computer answering emails that it's really, even if it's stressful, even if it's hard work, even if it's exhausting, it restores the mind in a different way. That, that maybe, it's like, if I just went and sat, all my mind might be doing is thinking about those, the things that I left at the computer.

• 48:48Ryan Holiday?

  Whereas when I'm doing the task, it forces you to become so present and lose, and you can't think about anything else.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:58Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. I know sometimes you guys ask what podcasts I listen to. One of my great friends in podcasting is Jordan Harbinger, who I'm talking to right now. I was curious, Jordan, you've, how many people do you think you've interviewed?

• 49:16Speaker 02

  It's gotta be about a thousand at this point.

• 49:19Ryan Holiday?

  And what do you think?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Over 14 years.

• 49:21Ryan Holiday?

  The average length of those interviews is?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  It's like an hour or 50, 55 minutes, something like that.

• 49:28Ryan Holiday?

  So you've done a thousand hours minimum of actual, sort of, on-camera, on-audio interview, plus all the prep. So what do you think? 10,000, you've done your 10,000 hours by this point?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that concept's been debunked, essentially, right? That number, but yeah, I've definitely done close to that. And if you count the interviews that I've been on, on other people's shows, is any sort of practice for interviewing at all, or content creation, then it's, yeah, it's well in advance, well in excess of that.

• 49:54Ryan Holiday?

  What do you think you've learned? Like, what's the thing you've learned the most?

• 49:58Speaker 02

  What's funny is everybody goes, wow, what are these productivity tips? What are all these great, amazing people that you have on the Jordan Harbinger Show have in common? And you'd be surprised, a lot of people think it's like, oh, they've got all these cool systems and tricks and like, they, it's all this Tim Ferriss stuff, which is great, but at the end of the day, what most of them do is they plan their day in advance, like, a week before or the day before, they get enough sleep, they go outside and go walking or go for a swim when they feel like they're discombobulated or unable to focus. And I'm like, okay, but you're a- Billionaire, what's the secret? And he's like, oh, I read a lot of books, you know, I get up early and I'm like, no, no, no. But the secret, secret that you only get when you have a billion dollars. And it's all the same stuff that you can do when you're a college student, you have no money.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  It's like, all this stuff is free.

• 50:44Ryan Holiday?

  I love that. The secret is there's no secret. You could check out the Jordan Harbinger podcast. I've been on it once, twice. I don't even remember how many times.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Oh, God, it's probably like four times over years. It's gotta be. You've had.

• 50:56Ryan Holiday?

  Too many, too many. Well, you could start there. Jordan's show is awesome. Check it out.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Being in the, now that you mentioned presence, being present is, you know, we've heard it a lot. People have talked about it a lot, the power of now. I mean, it's in all the Stoic and Vedic texts too, like of being in the moment. Like, what's your favorite way of being present? Or what is your favorite way of explaining to people what that genuinely means? Or what it means to you?

• 51:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I was talking, I was talking about Robert earlier. When I was thinking about becoming a writer, I had this sort of like year left on a, basically I had to stay at American Apparel for another year.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  I remember, yeah.

• 51:33Ryan Holiday?

  And, and he was like, so he's like, he's like, there's two kinds of time in life. There's like a live time and dead time. Dead time is when you're like checked out, you're just waiting for things to happen. You're just like burning the days, basically. And he's like, alive time is like, what will you make of this? Right? And so for me, what I always, I always actually wrote, I have a note card on my wall that I wrote, you know, seven or eight years ago now, that just says alive time versus dead time, question mark. And I think about that, like what I'm, what I'm thinking about is like, is this gonna be a live time or dead time for me? So like, yeah, yesterday I'm flying here, the plane's delayed. I've got a dinner that like, you know, tight window, I gotta get my rental car, drive, go to the dinner.

• 52:14Ryan Holiday?

  Don't want to be late, but like LA traffic, and you can spiral really quickly, like this, this got it. And then what you're doing is not sitting in the chair that you're in.

• 52:25Ryan Holiday?

  Reading a book or FaceTiming with someone that you like, or just not doing anything, like what you're not doing is being where you are. And, and so I try to like, always, I try to always come back to the present. What I try to remind myself is like, this moment is enough. Like, you don't, you don't actually have to be doing anything else. Like, you don't have to go to that thing later, don't have to be on time. Like, you don't have, you just have to be here.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 52:55Ryan Holiday?

  And it, it's not something you, you intellectually know and then automatically do. It actually has to be kind of like a mantra in your life that you're repeating all the time. And that's why I have it on my wall, too.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:10Ryan Holiday?

  You know, because it's so easy to forget.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  So easy to forget. And, and the funny thing is, it actually drains so much energy when you live in the future.

• 53:16Ryan Holiday?

  Like, Totally.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  If you're constantly planning, or like, what I've got to do next. Or if I'm, if I'm doing this podcast and thinking about all the things I have to do now, and which I've not been thinking about until this point, where now I'm thinking about it. And I just looked at all the slips I'm signing for my book right now.

• 53:29Ryan Holiday?

  Are you doing pages?

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there's, yeah, there's the inserts. And, and so it's like, now that I've looked at that, and I'm like, when I start thinking about it, all of a sudden, I'm anxious because I know how many I have to get through, as opposed to when I was just sitting here and being present.

• 53:41Ryan Holiday?

  Totally, totally. And, and then, like, what I, what I remind myself is that it's arrogant. Like, like, doing an interview is hard, you know? Writing a book is really hard. You know, driving is hard. Hitting a, hitting a pitch in Major League Baseball is hard. The idea that you are so good at this, that you can do it while not 100% being focused, I just, like, that is arrogant. Like, it is too, like, you are competing, like, I, I say to myself, like, you're competing against the best writers in the world, and you're competing against that kid, man or woman, who wants to break in more than anything. The idea that you're so good, and that people love you so much,

• 54:25Ryan Holiday?

  that you can do this with only 37% focus, is arrogant, and that's when you lose.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  That is a great point. I love that point. That is brilliant. Wow, I never looked at it like that.

• 54:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's spot on, I get it.

• 54:40Ryan Holiday?

  Like, in, in baseball, you have 400 milliseconds to, to decide and swing at a pitch. The idea that you can

• 54:49Ryan Holiday?

  You can be thinking about your last one or your next one in that moment is insane, right?

• 54:57Speaker 01

  It's insane, yeah.

• 54:58Ryan Holiday?

  Like, like, I think, you know, this, now we ask this question because we're so politically charged, we, we asked, we were going, if you win, are you gonna go to the White House? Are you gonna accept it? And it's like, you should not be thinking about that at all. Like, you should not even have, it should not even be a question. Like, cross that bridge when you come to it. Think about the fact that, like, you're in the Super Bowl tomorrow. And, and the other team wants it really bad, too. So the idea that you can, you can spend one millisecond not focusing is, is nuts.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  That is, that's brilliant. I love that. I'm never gonna forget that. That's awesome. No, no, I love that. That's such a unique point of view. And, yeah, I love that. That's brilliant.

• 55:38Ryan Holiday?

  And, and then I think it, it's not just personal success, right? Because I think what you talk about a lot is like, how do you apply these things to relationship? Like, the idea that, like, your wife is, loves you so much that you can only be 80% present, you know? Or that your kid is, your, your kid can do with, with 32% of a father. Like, you know, it's like, you promised to be there.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:02Ryan Holiday?

  And the idea that you can do this and be on your phone, or you can do this and be mulling over your meeting tomorrow, or whatever, like, you're stealing that from someone.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, when you talk about focus in that way, though, I feel like, I feel like stillness and silence and all these kind of like, they're so rare now.

• 56:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  And so we're almost scared of them. Like, we're scared of what's rare.

• 56:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And we get scared of telling things that we don't do often. And so like, when people talk about like, like, when you have an awkward silence, like, there are no silences in this conversation because it's genuinely back and forth. But if I didn't know what to say, I would be silent. But if you did that in a date scenario, if you did that in a interview, like, I remember, yeah, you've just, when I was interviewing for a role in my company. I was interviewing people and none of them would stop to think.

• 56:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Because I think they expected to have an answer straight away. And I had one person who would stop and say, can I think about that for a moment?

• 56:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's always so impressive.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  And I was so impressed that I hired that person. And, and there was, and when I hired them, I was so scared because I thought two things. Either they're really stupid, right? Or they're really smart.

• 57:11Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  And thankfully, they ended up being really smart.

• 57:13Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  But it was like that point of just like, we're so scared of stillness and silence. What have you, like, have you seen that? Have you noticed that? And like.

• 57:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I think we're afraid of what the silence is gonna reveal. Like, I think we're afraid to look in the mirror, so we distract ourselves. Do you know what I mean? Like, we know that the silence will reveal the emptiness, right? And so that's why we're always doing, doing, doing, talking, talking, talking. Listen, like, the amount of, of people I know that it's like, they're listening to audiobooks, like tweeting, watch it, like, just, just like, can you just sit there? Like, sometimes I'll remind my, oh, yeah, I'll get somewhere early and be like, I'm just gonna sit here. Like, I'm not gonna do anything, I'm just gonna sit here. And, and actually, yeah, like, the, the nothing is the something is, is, is hard for people to do.

• 58:05Ryan Holiday?

  You just realize, like, people are like, you know, if I turn my mind off for two seconds, like, I might realize that I hate my job.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:12Ryan Holiday?

  Or that, like, this relationship is over and I gotta leave it. Or, you know, like, we're afraid of the, we're afraid of the truths that we're gonna find out. And so that's why, yeah, people are glued to the television, glued to their phone, glued to consuming, consuming, consuming, so they don't have to create, so they don't have to face, they don't have to think. And that, that is, I think, yeah, that's the, that's the problem of our time.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the mistake too, because it numbs us from the reality that we're experiencing.

• 58:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  And then five, 10, 15 years down the line, you're now like. Oh, I should have known this before.

• 58:54Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I talk a little bit in the book about like the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's like, that happens over 13 days. Just the idea of like allowing that to happen over 13 days. Like now it'd be like, oh, we got to tweet out a response like right now. You know, like just the idea of letting something unfold going like, I'm not sure I have all the information. You know, like Kennedy's expression is like, I want to use time as a tool, but not as a couch. So you're not like, it's not silence. It's not retreating. It's not thinking because you're afraid of facing it. It's that you're like, no, I'm gonna deal with this, but I don't want to deal with it like half cocked or only partially informed. And so having the discipline, but also the confidence to do that is really important.

• 59:35Ryan Holiday?

  And I think, so I think at the end of the day, a lot of these emotional reactions, a lot of these instantaneous reactions, a lot of the chatter is rooted in like insecurity and fear, anxiety. And actually the more, like if you walked into a martial arts studio right now, the, the highest ranked person would be the slowest moving, the most chill, the most welcoming, you know? And it's like the newbie who's like all wired and aggressive and, you know? And so I think ideally as you get better, you should be getting more chill.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's, that's time as a tool, not as a couch. That's, that's genius. Yeah, that's brilliant. That makes so much sense because most of us use time as a couch when we're scared of something. We're like, oh, I'm not going to think about it or not going to talk about it for like days sometimes, always procrastinating or overthinking.

• 1:00:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, and we're not using time as a tool either. So we're like, I have everything I need to know. I'm ready to go. But it's like, actually, did you really study this? Did you ask for all the advice that you can? Did you walk through what could go wrong? You know, did you get, uh, you know, information from people who disagree with you? You know, like, have you actually done that? Like, most of the, I would, I would say most of the conflicts I've gotten in sort of professionally, creatively, most of the, the, you know, it came from me. Rushing in like I unthinkingly escalated or you know pushed ahead when like maybe I could

• 1:01:08Ryan Holiday?

  have ignored it or maybe I could have slept on it or maybe I could have written the email, deleted it and rewritten the email, you know, like, like Lincoln was famous, he would, he would write these letters, like, you know, someone would piss him off, they would do it, he'd write this like, you're the, he would just light them up and then he'd put it in his desk and he'd never send it, you know, and, and just the, just that idea of like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say what I, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna wait before I send it. And yeah, just not doing it out of anger. People think that the Stoics didn't have emotions. That's not what it is at all. Cause the Stoics were human. The Senate goes like, no amount of wisdom can reduce, can eliminate,

• 1:01:49Ryan Holiday?

  like, our human impulses. He's like, no amount of training can make you not blush, right? Or not cold, or not feel adrenaline. But what the Stoic is striving to do is not be driven by those emotions when they make decisions. So it's not that you wouldn't lust after something. It's like, are you gonna blow up your life for five minutes with a stranger, right? It's, it's not, should you strive to be the best in your sport or in your field, but it's, are you gonna, are you gonna do it because you love it, not because you're trying to prove your dad wrong? Or what,

• 1:02:30Ryan Holiday?

  you know, like, just doing it from a, a place that's not, the Stoics, now we talk, it's like, find your passion. The Stoics were like, passions are bad. You know, passions are like these demons that possess us and they're, so we're not doing that.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  What I found in most of our emotions, because a lot of people would be like, oh, well, if I meditate, do I get rid of stress completely? Like, and I was just like, You know, one of our teachers, like thousands of years ago, there's a teacher named Yamanacharya, and he would talk about, he was a renunciant, and he was free from sex life. So, you know, and his, he would always say, like, I, I have a, it's, it's not that I never have a thought of sex or lust.

• 1:03:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  He was just that I have my response to it.

• 1:03:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  And his response is now shortening the time of how long he entertains that feeling.

• 1:03:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think Viktor Frankl's like, there's stimulus and there's response. And what you're trying to train is that space between those two.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:03:28Ryan Holiday?

  And I think early on, we're private, there's no space, it's like this, and you're just trying to, if you can add a half second, do you know what I mean?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Ryan Holiday?

  To, to just even, like, to just even go like, no, I'm not gonna do that.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:03:40Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, or I'm gonna do it this way instead.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Ryan Holiday?

  Or maybe I'll do tomorrow.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah.

• 1:03:46Ryan Holiday?

  You write the letter, but do you have to send, you write the letter because you're so angry, you're gonna go do, but do you have the control an hour later not to put it in the mail?

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's my, my thing with that is I'm always just like, I need to sleep on stuff.

• 1:04:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  I need to take the day, think about it, stretch that moment out.

• 1:04:04Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Because, yeah, your initial reaction is usually fueled by ego, or, you know, if you're responding to something or reacting to something.

• 1:04:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  And, and I see that myself all the time, but you, you have to give yourself that space to allow your ego to feel it, give yourself that space to feel the fear, if that's what it is.

• 1:04:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  And then, yeah, I love that, I love that. And today, we're just in this send culture, right? That's the challenge, like, you don't even think about sending a million messages a day.

• 1:04:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think, and Seneca's point is like, look, it's okay to be afraid, it's okay to grieve when you lose someone.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:04:33Ryan Holiday?

  But it's like, a year later, if you're still crippled by that thing, you gotta do some work to walk through, to, so it's like, uh, I think Miss Team Taleb was, it's not about the elimination of emotions, it's about the domestication of them, you know? A dog is the same as a wolf. But it's been trained and some of those things have been bred out of them to a level that allows them to function in society, you know, like, but there's still that little bit of that wild animal in there. You gotta keep it on a, on the chain.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. Let's dive into, we've been talking about for all of you who are listening and watching and loving this conversation, Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. It's already number one New York Times bestseller. So make sure you go grab the book. But there were a few pages that I just turned in that I wanna, I remember we did this for the Daily Stoic too. The best things about Ryan's book is they're just, he's a great storyteller. The stories are unique, fresh. You might never, I've never heard any of those stories about Churchill and was it Gladstone?

• 1:05:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that ever before. And so, yeah, he's a great storyteller. But there's this one that I picked out and you can either tell the story or people can read it in the book. But it's the story you tell from the let go chapter. It kicks off the let go chapter and you talk about the story that Kenzo once told of his student.

• 1:05:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Ryan Holiday?

  If, if people haven't read the Zen, Zen in the Art of Archery, it's incredible. But like, you know, he's talking about how when he would train his students, he was like, don't even think about hitting the target. Just think about form, right? Like get lost in the form, get lost in the process. And that's actually something I kind of try to focus on my books is like, like, okay, whenever, and I know you have a book coming out, so that we could talk about this a little bit. Whenever I hear someone have a sales goal for their book, I'm like, you're lost. You know, like you, you, you've already thought about this the wrong way because at the very best, your goal should be to sell an unlimited like the idea that you're like a million copies is success means you've like, cause

• 1:06:30Ryan Holiday?

  what if, what if you sell zero copies, but you change the world? What if you sell 10 million copies and then it's disproven? You know, like, like it's not about that. It's not about the end state. It's about the process, right? It's about, it's about the impact. It's about doing it right. Because that's all that you control. And so we, we think that it's all about goals. And, and certainly there are people who would be improved by having goals because they leave, they lead an aimless life. But actually for a really ambitious, talented people, it's actually about. Removing goals because those are outcome oriented and focusing internally on process and form and, and, and presence, especially with something like archery, where archery is

• 1:07:15Ryan Holiday?

  kind of like golf, where like the harder you try, the worse you do at it because you've, instead of being present, you're thinking about all these other things. And so, yeah, he would like, he'd be like, bad shot, forget it. Good shot, definitely forget. Like what the form, the form, the form and, and smooth and slow and, and, and, and effortlessness. That's actually what you're trying to get to. And I think writing is like that. Music is like that. Acting is like, the harder you're trying to be a good actor, the worse of an actor you are.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. You have to get lost in it.

• 1:07:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  And then that was, I, I've recently started, I got a tennis coach recently.

• 1:07:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, tennis also, yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  So tennis was something that I used to play a lot as a kid and a teenager, but never was trained. And I picked it up and I'm competitive. So I could play. But then when I went to get trained, I was like, no, I want to do it properly. So I was like, I don't, I don't want to pretend I can play. And so we've trained now for the past four weekends, we have not played a game of tennis yet.

• 1:08:15Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  So he's just getting my form right. And it's the same, like, he actually doesn't care where the ball ends up on the other side. It's just all about my form and the swing. And we're doing backhands and forehands and, and it's so beautiful. Like, it's actually such a fun way of learning.

• 1:08:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  But I can imagine if I was taught that as a kid, I would have been like, I just want to play the game.

• 1:08:32Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Now, there's a famous story about Lombardi and he walks in and he's like, this is the Green Bay Packers. So obviously they're all great football players. And he opens the season with like, gentlemen, this is a football. You know, like he starts at so the basic level, but it's like, that's actually where we need to focus.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:08:50Ryan Holiday?

  Because we have all this stuff in our head. And if you're, if you're running down the field thinking, where's my route? What should I be doing? What did coach say? You are doing it the wrong way. You got to get actually out of that and into your body and into the process and into the form.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. The time when I really felt that was a couple of years ago, two, three years ago, I tested like seven different business strategies.

• 1:09:15Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  So seven different businesses, ideas, concepts, revenue streams, whatever you want to call it. And the interesting was that all seven of them worked financially. But I only enjoyed four of them.

• 1:09:30Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  In the process.

• 1:09:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  So financially, all seven worked. They all reaped rewards, they all made money. But actually, only four of them actually made me feel happy when I was doing them.

• 1:09:41Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  And so I remember going, I'm never doing those other three things ever again.

• 1:09:45Ryan Holiday?

  And that might seem like a basic decision, but most people do the exact opposite. They're like, which of the seven made the most money? That's the right one to do.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I know that and I still say it now. Like, I, the biggest satisfaction for me today is I get to wake up and do what I love every day. Like, to me, that's just like.

• 1:10:01Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  It's, it's life changing. And, you know, I work with and coach, and I'm sure, I'm sure you do too. So many people who literally will come to me and be like, Jay, I just built this billion dollar business.

• 1:10:11Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  In 12 years, but I wasted 12 years of my life or I didn't enjoy it.

• 1:10:16Ryan Holiday?

  Well, one of the things that, that was really helpful to me, because I built this company where we work with authors and and do ghostwriting and help build sort of the stuff we're talking about for people. And I kept noticing over and over again that the people that were coming to me had like built, they have billion dollar companies, huge brands, they've done this thing. And, and it was like, wait, all they want to do is be what I get to do, right? All they, they built this thing that's way harder to do than what I do. And now they wanted, and so I was like, I have to make sure it's so easy to get away from that thing because you have all these other opportunities. It's like, wait, if the, if the person becomes a billionaire and what they really want to do is write for a living.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:10:57Ryan Holiday?

  And I am lucky enough to write for a living without having had to be a billionaire.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Ryan Holiday?

  I gotta make sure I protect that purity and that space and that privilege to do that thing that I have found what I love and, and not be tempted away from it by what's more exciting, what's more lucrative, you know, what's more, uh, you know, the bigger ego hit, whatever.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I think those are such. There's such like subliminal lures and like, you know, just everything we see and you go for the shiny objects or the platform or the title or whatever it may be. I actually said that it was, it's really, I'm really happy hearing from you. You've written, what, nine books now?

• 1:11:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, nine or 10, something like that.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's like, I'm happy hearing it from you because I said the same thing to my team and, and because we wrote a chapter on process and not result too, based on the Bhagavad Gita that they used. And so when I was writing that, I was, I was explaining that to my team. I was like, I'm not writing this trying to be a New York Times bestseller or a Wall Street. I was like, that's not, I was trying to explain the concept through my own person. I was like, I'm trying to make sure we write the best book we possibly can write and that I absolutely love and that I'm enjoying while I'm doing it.

• 1:12:08Ryan Holiday?

  And look, you have to do that because it's inherently unpredictable, right? Like, let's say, let's say eight of my first nine books did not appear on the Times list and they probably sold enough copies to, because the world isn't fair, because somebody made a mistake, because somebody had a vendetta. I don't know why. But like, like, is that going to determine success for me? Then I've just handed over my sanity, my happiness, my success to an outside entity. And, and, and then conversely, let's say you do get it. Well, what if I'd gotten it, but actually I knew deep down the book was no good, right? Or that I cheated or plagiarized or, you know, had someone write it for me or that

• 1:12:48Ryan Holiday?

  I bought my way onto the list, which you can do, right? Like, I'm prefacing or preferring an outcome to process and missing the entire point.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. And as I'm, I think I messaged you when I saw the news that you now share something in common with Leonardo DiCaprio. It was like, the guys had to wait so long to get an Oscar.

• 1:13:08Ryan Holiday?

  Well, look, the other thing, it's like, three weeks after I hit it or four weeks after I hit it, like Donald Trump Jr. took the number one spot. So it's like, this doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Like, like, you also have to remind yourself that, like, it doesn't actually matter. It's just a piece of paper. It's just a random accomplishment. How many people have done it before you? How many people will do it after you? If, if it was meaningless when you were deprived of it, also have to remind yourself, it doesn't really matter when you get it. It's just extra.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that. I'm so aligned with that. And yeah, let that blow your mind if it's, if it takes a bit of time, because I think it does take a bit of time to, we're always trying to move away from pain. Because we think we have to move closer to pleasure.

• 1:13:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  When actually.

• 1:13:54Ryan Holiday?

  You mean, the Stoics talk about indifference.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah. And in Vedic terms, it's neutrality.

• 1:14:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Like, it's same, same thing, but different, yeah, just that neutrality in happiness and distress, in fame and infamy, in.

• 1:14:08Ryan Holiday?

  Well, so one of the things, so like, that indifference can feel like, okay, does nothing matter? Is that nihilism? And one of the ways, the way the Stoics sort of navigate that, which I love, Seneca goes, but there's also preferred indifference, like, not indifference, C E, T S, right? There's things you are indifferent to, but you would prefer, right? So he's like, it's better to be tall than short, it's better to be rich than poor, or whatever. It's better to hit the list versus not hit the list, but you also still have to not let it affect you either way. Right? And realizing that, yeah, okay, it's good to get it, but it can't be everything to get it.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:14:50Ryan Holiday?

  There, I lived in New Orleans when I was writing my first book, and they had this word that I love there. Lanyap, do you know this word?

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  No, I don't know.

• 1:14:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it means like, the 13th donut. It means like, the extra, like, so you buy 12 donuts and they throw in an extra donut.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:04Ryan Holiday?

  You're like, you paid for 12, you get 12, great, right? If you got 11, you'd say, hey, you owe me one. But like, it's the extra, it's like the cream, it's the, it's the, it's the bonus. And so, so for me, it's not that like, I didn't care that I hit number one. It's not that I don't care that my books have sold copies, that I've got to do cool things, that it's been lucrative. It's that that is extra on top of that I enjoy doing the work, that I get to, you know, I get to do my passion, that I know, you know, it's, it's extra on top. And then that way, you can take it or leave it.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I love that. Okay. This is from the chapter called Heal the Inner Child.

• 1:15:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Which I thought was fascinating, because I've never heard you talk about that before. I don't feel like, yeah, I don't think I've really heard you mention that. Tell me where that idea sparked from for this chapter and why it was such a focus.

• 1:15:59Ryan Holiday?

  I mean, part of it, like, to be perfectly honest, from like, therapy, right? Like, you realize that a lot of the really strong reactions and feelings and things that you have.

• 1:16:11Ryan Holiday?

  Are not you as an adult. They're you at whatever age you're stuck in. Right. So it's you, the 13 year old whose parents got divorced. It's you, the 11 year old who is humiliated in front of math class. Right. Or it's you, the, the six year old who had to wear glasses and you didn't like it. Or, you know, it's, we have, we all have experienced trauma and pain and deficiencies and problems. And there's a part of us that is that age that needs, that needed something then that we didn't get. And now we have to do the work to parent that inner child.

• 1:16:47Ryan Holiday?

  Because, yeah, an 11 year old or a, you know, an arrogant 17 year old is not going to cut it in the world of publishing. Right. Cause like, you're going to have to be an adult. You're going to have to be the bigger person. You're going to have to be responsible. You're going to have to be mature. And so just the act of, of deciding to parent that inner child, to reassure them, to comfort them, to be what you didn't get from the people who should have done it when you were that age is really important. And if you don't have that, if you don't have, if you can't not, if you cannot settle that inner child, you will not have stillness, you will not have success, or you will end up destroying that success. Because you're not capable, you're not mature enough to deal with it.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Ryan Holiday?

  And so, yeah, like, look, you're not going to meditate your way into healing that inner child. Like, you gotta go to therapy or you gotta have some unpleasant conversations. You gotta look in the mirror. You gotta journal, you gotta do some work there. But, but yeah, I think it's an important part of getting better and getting healthy.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I recorded a podcast last year called, uh, why we need to develop the emotional skills our parents didn't have. And, and it was always, it's also about that compassion that when you go through that process of building those skills, you realize how hard it is.

• 1:18:04Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, totally.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  And then to display it and to express it and for people to feel it and, and to be able to learn how to do it for yourself. And I think that's what, you know, What therapy or meditation really is, is your ability to parent yourself, your ability to give yourself what you feel you need from others.

• 1:18:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  And becoming aware and being specific about what that is.

• 1:18:24Ryan Holiday?

  And just making sure your life is not ruled by these emotional reactions or issues, that it's not your fault that you have them, but it is your fault if you don't deal with them.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:35Ryan Holiday?

  You know? And, and it'll blow, if you don't, it'll blow up your marriage, it'll blow up your work, it'll blow up your, you know, it'll just make your life not as good as it can be. And, and yeah, taking the time to, to, to do that, like, inner work is really, really important.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So Ryan, we've got these two segments now that we end with. You're, you're probably, you're the only second person after my wife to have done this.

• 1:18:59Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  So it'll be fun to do with you. It's called fill in the blanks.

• 1:19:02Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  So you have to end the sentence. And you can end it with more than one word, but you end the sentence. So, "Good writing is never..."

• 1:19:09Ryan Holiday?

  Easy.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  "Stillness is similar to..."

• 1:19:13Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I would say nothing, right? It's, it's a singular, what I love about stillness is that like, it's very hard to define, but everyone knows what it is. You know what I mean? Like, everyone's experienced it. Might have been a, for me, you know, not for me, but it's like, for one person, it was, you know, watching the snowfall. For the other, it was playing the piano. And for the other, it was, you know, who knows, right? It's a totally different thing. But it is this singular, unique thing that, what I love about it is that it appears in every philosophical school and religion. And there are very few things that that's true for.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  It's true, absolutely. All right, love that. Ryan Holiday loves?

• 1:19:51Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, family, work, like, family writing, like, family craft, and, uh, life.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Having a farm helps me.

• 1:20:03Ryan Holiday?

  Relax, uh, disconnect, and, uh, be active.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  I have no tolerance for.

• 1:20:14Ryan Holiday?

  Too many things, unfortunately. You know, the expression of suffering fools. Like, I have, I have problems realizing like not everyone holds themselves to the standard, to my standards, and that they're my standards. And it's totally unfair to expect other people to live up to a promise they never made.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've always found that hard. I've always, I can totally relate to that one for sure. And I've been blown away. And there's, there's probably only two people in the world who are monk teachers that I know that don't have that.

• 1:20:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  And when they first displayed that, I was just like, wow. Like, they're like the hardest working, they made the most sacrifice, they meditate for the longest time, they wake up the earliest, they do more than everyone, yet they do have not, do not have that expectation.

• 1:20:59Ryan Holiday?

  That was Kobe's big problem, right? Like, he couldn't understand that not everyone was Kobe, that they were great, but not at his level. And like, I think great leaders figure out how to work with people who are not like them.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's hard. I think that takes the most.

• 1:21:14Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Most stress. Okay, that was good. You performed really well. That was awesome.

• 1:21:17Ryan Holiday?

  All right.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  So, we end every interview with the final five.

• 1:21:20Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Which is our rapid fire, quick fire round. So, these are one word to one sentence answers. They're a bit deeper than the other ones. The last ones are fun. So, this is, what question do you ask yourself the most?

• 1:21:32Ryan Holiday?

  Does this matter?

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  Okay, the book you're most proud of and why?

• 1:21:38Ryan Holiday?

  I actually think Conspiracy is my best book.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting. That's one of yours that I haven't read.

• 1:21:43Ryan Holiday?

  It was, it was the most outside my comfort zone. It was the, it was, and weirdly, has done the worst. And so, I also love that, like, I can be proud of it for intrinsic reasons.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is, the funny thing about that is, that's how I feel about some of my favorite videos.

• 1:22:02Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. I think every creative person is like, you, you, you have to learn how to separate best from most popular.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah.

• 1:22:09Ryan Holiday?

  Because they're not the same.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  They're not the same. Absolutely, yeah, I agree with you. Okay, question number three. What question do you wish people asked you more often?

• 1:22:17Ryan Holiday?

  I never have a good answer to that question.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Ah, interesting.

• 1:22:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:22:20Ryan Holiday?

  I just don't think about questions that I should be asked.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Oh, great, because your fourth question would have been, I would have asked you that question.

• 1:22:26Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  If you could create a law based on the teaching you've learned for the world to follow, what would it be?

• 1:22:32Ryan Holiday?

  That's really good. I don't know, and, and sort of mandating some things sort of defeats the purpose of it, but like. Oh, man, that's really good.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Thank you, Don.

• 1:22:46Ryan Holiday?

  I was talking to Shaka Smart, who's the coach at UT, the basketball coach. He's awesome, very zen, very philosophical. He's saying that he works as a coach, he never criticizes players for something that's not in their control. So like, it's not whether the shot goes in or not, it's whether it was a good shot to take or not, right? And so, a lot of times in society, we try to hold people accountable for the part after the ball has left their fingers, you know? And so, maybe there's something about like, sort of going like, hey, was this a good idea at the time you did it? Then you're off the hook. Was this obviously bad when you made the decision? Okay, now actually, we're going to come down on you with full weight, even if it worked out. You know what I mean? I don't know, maybe there's something there.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  No, that's brilliant. I love that. I don't know how you build a law around it, but.

• 1:23:35Ryan Holiday?

  I don't either.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  That is, yeah, that's, I fully believe that. I think we're so, we so try and either predict how a decision's going to pan out.

• 1:23:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  And that stops us from making a good decision right now.

• 1:23:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Or when the decision goes wrong, we start blaming the time that we made it.

• 1:23:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  And like, oh, you shouldn't have told me to do that, or whatever it is. Yeah, that's powerful. I really like that.

• 1:23:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Was it a good shot to take?

• 1:23:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's really cool.

• 1:23:59Ryan Holiday?

  Because, look, you know, a great shooter's only going to shoot 50 or 60% from the field. So, it's going to miss a certain percentage of the time, but if they don't take the shot, they're not going to make it. So, how do you, how do you, how do you? It's easy to yell at them for missing.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:15Ryan Holiday?

  It's, it's, it's harder to go, you'll get it next time.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Or, you made the right decision there.

• 1:24:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Or you made the wrong, it wasn't, it wasn't that I'm mad that it didn't go in.

• 1:24:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  I'm actually more upset about the fact that you took a, you went for a three pointer.

• 1:24:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there's, there's like a famous story about John Wooden, where like, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or something made like a behind the back pass, worked out, great, you know, worked out perfectly. And he was like, I'm mad at you because, you know, a behind the back pass, you know, works 70% of the time. Chest pass, in that scenario, works 80% of the time. So, the fact that you made the behind the back pass and it worked, statistically, does not make that a good decision or not. You actually made the right, right, you made the wrong decision, even though you got the right outcome.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Ryan Holiday?

  Conversely, if you made the chest pass and it hadn't worked out.

• 1:25:03Ryan Holiday?

  Not, you know, that doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, wow, that's, yeah, that's, that's a fun one. I like that a lot. Okay, fifth and final question of the final five is what's been your biggest personal lesson in the last 12 months?

• 1:25:17Ryan Holiday?

  The reason I wrote Stillness was realizing like all the best moments in my life had some kind of stillness in them. And then going, why am I content for that to happen accidentally? Right? So yeah, sure, there's a certain amount of sort of consciously seeking something out can deprive you of it. But it's more like, how am I just going to make sure that I'm not making this thing that I, I actually want X, but are my decisions making X more or less likely? You know, and going, okay, so stillness is the goal. That's the, that's what the aim, that's what success is. But am I making decisions that create more or less room for stillness? And, and so just that, oh yeah, all the great moments are like this, rather than

• 1:25:59Ryan Holiday?

  just sort of hoping that you accidentally get what you want. That's been big for me. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.