If You Want To Be Powerful | Practice Silence

Since the time of the Stoics, people have aspired to command great armies. To accumulate great fortunes. To hold high office. To be famous. To be important. In short, humans have longed to (and continue to) chase power.📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is out now! We’ve extended the pre-order bonuses for the next week—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos al podcast diario de Stoic. Cada día te traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, ilustrada con historias de la historia, eventos actuales y literatura para ayudarte a ser mejor en lo que haces. Y al principio de la semana intentamos hacer un profundísimo descubrimiento, estableciendo una especie de intención estoica para la semana, algo para meditar, algo para pensar, algo para dejarte con, para journalizar, lo que sea que te ocurra de hacer. Así que vamos a entrar.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  Si quieres ser poderoso, desde el tiempo de los estoicos, la gente ha aspirado a comandar grandes armas, a acumular gran fortuna, a mantener grandes oficinas, a ser famoso, a ser importante. En pocas palabras, los humanos han estado y continúan buscando el poder. Pero la ironía de esto es cómo fácilmente renuncian al poder que ya tienen. Como Pubilius Sirius, un esclavo convertido en filósofo, como Epictetus escribía: ¿Tú tienes un gran imperio que gobiernes a ti mismo? Piensa en Epictetus, que estaba dispuesto a hacer tantos compromisos con Nero para estar en la habitación donde sucedió. Sí, se convirtió en consul, pero ¿en realidad era más poderoso que Epictetus, que hizo el trabajo en sus deseos y ambiciones y vino a comandar a sí mismo? ¿Quién fue más libre? ¿Quién fue mayor?

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  Es loco. Nuestra ambición por comandar sobre los demás, como Seneca señaló, sin autoaviso, termina comandando a nosotros mismos. Para ser poderoso, renunciamos al poder sobre nuestro horario. Para ser rico, venderemos todo nuestro tiempo. Para ser famoso y bien apreciado, renunciamos al amor de nuestras familias. Para ganar premios, renunciamos a nuestra autonomía, intercambiando nuestras preferencias por las de los juzgadores o los guardián. Puedes ser poderoso ahora mismo en tu propia vida, en tu propia mente, si decides conquistar lo que ya eres. Si dejas de dar tu poder. And I've always loved that quote, "Would you have a great empire, rule over yourself?" It's actually the opener, the epigraph to the introduction of the new book,

• 2:11Ryan Holiday?

  Discipline is Destiny. We're talking about how that seizing command of yourself, that's how you really achieve your destiny. Not the destiny of having the most or being the richest, but the destiny of being the best person you are capable of being requires that kind of self-discipline. There's a chapter about Napoleon and Napoleon's warnings that he wrote as a young man, specifically even about Alexander and his excessive ambition and where it got him. And then Napoleon fails to learn that lesson to the ruin, not just of himself, but millions of Europeans. To me, discipline is the most important trait a person can have, right? It's not knowing what you should do, it's being able to do it, right?

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  To have the force of will and character to stick to the right path, even as Seneca says, "When those around you are hopelessly lost." There's no one truly great that we truly admire, who hasn't been defined by their self-control and their discipline. So I can't wait for you to check out the new book, Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control, the second in my Four Virtues series on the cardinal virtues of Stoicism, courage, discipline, justice, wisdom. The new book is out now. We're still honoring some of the preorder bonuses, which you can grab at DailyStoic.com/preorder. But you can pick up Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control anywhere books are sold. Grab it on Audible, you can grab it on Kindle, you can pick it up at your local indie bookstore.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  If you want me to sign your copy, you can also do that at DailyStoic.com/preorder. And we even have some signed manuscript pages for people who order five copies, plus you get a bunch of other bonuses, which I'd love to give you. So sign up at DailyStoic.com/discipline.

• 4:01Ryan Holiday?

  Practice silence.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  Social media teaches us to have an opinion about everything. Silence beckons us to speak. We live in a loud culture and we try to keep up by being louder in return. And how much trouble does this cause us? How much might we learn if we spent more time listening to others than trying to sandwich our opinions in at every turn? How much of what we say do we come to regret? So really, the truly loud thing to say is nothing. So spend some time writing your thoughts down this week. See how many of them you can keep to yourself. Be bold in your silence and how much you hold your tongue this week. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living",

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon. Then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. One of the hardest parts about putting out a book is all the interviews I have to do. I feel like I talk more than I've ever talked in my life. And it's such a violation of how I try to comport myself, how I want to live, what's healthy to live. People should not be asking for your opinion as much as they have been asking me

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  in the last couple of weeks. People should not be as interested in me as they've been in the last couple of weeks. I shouldn't be seeking out attention or platforms the way that I have been in the last couple of weeks. It's like a deliberately unhealthy period. It's almost like gaining weight for an acting role or something. It's just, it's part of the job. I have to do it. It's like pulling all-nighters for some project where there's no alternative. It's not good for you. You shouldn't be doing it. And then your diet suffers and all this other stuff. But that's just part of the job and I have to come to understand that. But I also work really hard not to let it go to my head because I don't want to be a babbling, self-absorbed, self-obsessed person who thinks that people should care as much as they've cared the last couple of weeks. That's just the reality of putting out a book. It's been weird. It's been weird.

• 6:17Ryan Holiday?

  And like I say, one of the benefits of philosophy is that it centers you. You come back to it. And so I'll give you three quotes today. From Zeno, uh, two or four quotes today, two from Zeno, actually, that should help you and certainly helping me to think about. Zeno says, "Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue." It's inevitable, right? An actor goes on a, on a press tour and they say something dumb because they're just forced to talk. They're forced to answer all these questions. But you get in trouble the more you talk. That's just something I've found. As Robert Greene says, "Always say less than necessary." Uh, another quote from Zeno, "To a youngster talking nonsense," Zeno said, "The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth, so we might listen more and talk less."

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  It's beautiful. I love that. And then Plato, talking about Cato the Younger, says, "Cato practiced the kind of public speech capable of moving the masses, believing proper political philosophy takes care like any great city to maintain the warlike element. But he was never seen practicing in front of others and no one ever heard him rehearse his speech. When he was told that people blamed him for his silence, he replied, 'Better they not blame my life. I begin to speak only when I'm certain that what I'll say isn't best left unsaid.'" Beautiful. That's something I do try to carry forward when I do talks and stuff. People go, "What do you think about this? What do you think about that?" And I try to, on a pretty regular basis, maybe even once per talk, go, "I don't know. I don't know about that." Because you don't want to get the habit of forcing an answer about things when

• 7:47Ryan Holiday?

  you don't know. If you don't know, it takes courage to be like, "I don't know," or "I don't care. I have not studied that. I don't have enough information." "To be okay being thought dumb or foolish," as Epictetus says. Silence does that. Practicing silence is a discipline. It takes discipline. It is not easy. And you will sometimes look silly and you will sometimes hurt people's feelings, but I think you'll hurt people's feelings less by not talking than you will by talking. And that gets us to the final quote. This is from Seneca's play Theestes. He says, "Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life." Another great quote I love from Seneca, he says, "When I think of all the things I said,

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  I envy the mute," meaning he wishes he couldn't talk because he said so much dumb stuff that when he thinks back on it, he's almost overwhelmed with shame or awkwardness. And the hard part's about being a writer, having a social media presence is you know what's out there and you cringe, you think about it. There's always a tweet, there's always a dumb article, there's always a time you jumped out to take a hot take. You should have just left it there because you didn't know, you didn't know enough, you didn't put the work in, you didn't actually care, you forced it, you let your ego get a hold of you, and that never makes good work. So let's practice a little silence this week. If you have something to say, write it down in your journal. Don't say it on social media. Always say less than necessary. Try to say less than necessary. That's the Stoic way.

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks, I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, the leather bound edition of the Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.