Ask Daily Stoic: How Do You Recognize What's in Your Control?

Ryan talks about speaking to service members at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Ryan reads a passage from Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. So I just got back in. I was telling you a couple of weeks ago that I was flying to Aviano, the NATO base, to speak to the men and women in the US Air Force. It was crazy. It was quite a flight. I flew from Nashville to Dulles, Dulles to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Venice, and then I drove from Venice to Aviano. But it was incredible to speak to people who, you know, again, it's so easy, I think, for the philosophy to become this abstraction, to come, this thing that you talk about and think about. But you realize, like, Stoicism is this thing that you're meant to do. It's Stockdale parachuting into that prison camp. It's someone, you know, getting three weeks' notice that they've got a new posting and

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  they're having to move from wherever they are to the middle of Italy. It's somebody going through the separation of being far from friends and family. It's someone struggling with PTSD, right? It's someone struggling to pass a physical test. It's someone paying their dues. It's someone putting their life on the line for the service of their country. To me, that's what Stoicism is actually about. That's what we're studying. That's what we're practicing. That's what we're trying to do. And so it was just really humbling and inspiring to be around these warriors, but also philosophers. One of the things we did talk about is Stephen Pressfield. Stephen Pressfield is the author of a book that's very popular in the military called The Warrior Ethos, and a book called Gates of Fire. My favorite book of his is

• 1:58Ryan Holiday?

  The War of Art. I'm going to talk a little bit about him in next week's message because he came here and I got to interview him. But, you know, I've been on the road a lot speaking. It's been... Tough, it's hard to be away from family, but I just so believe in the stuff that I'm talking about that any chance I can to get it in front of people and walk them through it, like I know it's going to have an impact on their lives. And yeah, it's just, it's an honor to do this. And so, thank you for listening. I think we've got a great episode for you this week. Can't wait for you to hear it. And of course, if you've got questions, send them in at [email protected].

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  So I wanted to do a little reading. This is a passage from Twyla Tharp, who wrote an amazing book called The Creative Habit, and I quote it in Stillness is the Key. And I thought I'd read that passage and then maybe riff on it a little bit. She has this exercise. She says, "Sit in a room and let your thoughts go where they will. Do this for one minute. Work up to 10 minutes a day of this mindless mental wandering. Then start paying attention to your thoughts to see if a word or a goal materializes. If it doesn't, extend the exercise to 11 minutes, then 12, then 13, until you find a length of time you need to ensure that something interesting will come to mind. The Gaelic phrase for this state of mind is quietness without loneliness."

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  I think people seem to kind of like magically want ideas to just come to them. They want to have epiphanies. They want to, you know, figure out what their passion is, what they want to do in life. But they're not actually creating this space or time in their lives for that to happen. So have you ever just sat with a piece of paper and written out ideas? Have you ever actually just talked into a microphone? Have you sat in front of a blank word document and riffed? Like, you have to create time and space for your mind to wander and explore and figure out what's important to you. And I think we're so busy, we're so active, we have so many inputs coming at us all the time that we

• 4:03Ryan Holiday?

  really don't have any room for that. And then we wonder why our, so we don't feel creative, why we don't have ideas, why, but other people seem to be such fountains of inspiration and creativity and we're not. You have to actively carve out that space for you in your life. And that requires- There's in some ways more discipline than being busy and active to say, no, I'm just going to sit here and look out the window. I'm not going to put headphones in. I'm not going to turn on the TV. I'm not going to pick up a book, right? I'm not going to answer email. I'm just going to do nothing. I'm going to do nothing deliberately and consciously and intentionally. And I'm going to do it for the uncertain payoff of insights or creativity.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  It's hard to do, but I think more important than ever. And that's kind of what the idea of stillness is the key is really about. And I think Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit, is a great resource for anyone looking to explore that.

• 5:03Ryan Holiday?

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• 5:45Ryan Holiday?

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• 6:07Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send me Ryan Holiday questions to info at Daily Stoic, and then we answer them. Your pressing thoughts, questions, concerns about this ancient philosophy that we both love. Today's first question is from Terry. He said, I love the control how you play a message. That's something we talk about from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus. You don't control- What happens, you control how you respond, all than an athlete, a politician, a leader, thinker, controls is how they play the game. They don't control what the game does to them or what other people are doing inside the game. So he says, I recognize that I believe I control more than I actually do. I think I can fix things. I think I can influence others'

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  behaviors. We talk about how to recognize what is or isn't in your control. I mean, this is the the million dollar question. And I think the Stoics are pretty black and white. They're like, you control this, you don't control that. The truth is, there's, there is stuff that's kind of in the middle. Like, I control the book that I write, but I don't control how many copies it sells, except there are decisions, choices, actions that I take that influence how likely it is to sell. Like, certainly, by not doing anything, I am increasing the chances of it not selling. And so, or there's a person back there who's making a bunch of noise out on the street. So I don't control that, but I do, I could go tell them

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  to stop. We have some influence, but not complete influence. And so I think acknowledging that there is some gray area is important. But really, I think what the Stoics are talking about is just making sure you're focusing on and you're not tying your identity up in things that are not up to you. That's sort of how I take it in my life. So there's things I control, there's things I don't control, and there's things where I'm understanding that that I have influence, but I can direct them, but I can't ultimately control them. All right. So Jim says that there are 52 weeks in a year, and that he's thinking about implementing one voluntary discomfort strategy each week. What are some strategies to intentionally

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  go about practicing voluntary discomfort or mental discipline? Well, first off, I love this idea. I think this is great. We might even steal it. This could actually be like a daily Stoic project at some point. But the idea of testing yourself, pushing your boundaries, getting outside your comfort zone on a regular sort of systematic basis, is going to make you a tougher, stronger, more resilient person. One of the reasons I love endurance sports, why I love running, and why it's part of my routine is like, It has toughened me up to the point where like, I don't have to worry about whether I can handle difficult things. Cause I've, I experienced it enough on a daily basis that I, I know that I push through that I, like, I know that I'm not a quitter because I've been at points in

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  a totally arbitrary, meaningless activity where everything in my body made me want to stop doing it. And I had the willpower to keep going. I think that's what endurance sports, whether it's running or swimming or biking or whatever, that's what it's training you to do. Mirakami, the writer, the novelist, he's a distance runner. He says like, running is both a metaphor and an activity. And the metaphor is like you're teaching yourself that you can persevere. So, I mean, cold showers would be a great thing to do, you know, quitting things, giving things up would be a great voluntary discomfort activity. Doing things that make you feel self-conscious or embarrassed, doing things in a new way. We interviewed David Epstein and he talked about

• 9:41Ryan Holiday?

  the velvet rut or the rut of competence. Like when you get in a comfort zone and everything's exactly how you want it. That's a comfortable place to be, but not a place that's making you grow. You grow when you are outside of that. So I, I think what I'd be thinking about as I'm coming up with these activities is like, am I just subjecting myself to pain for the sake of feeling pain? No. It's, am I learning? Am I getting better? Am I strengthening my power of will over myself? Because that's why we're doing this. The whole point of it is to improve and increase your willpower, your ability to make your mind will your body to do something that wouldn't naturally be inclined to do. Or sometimes to make your mind think about something that it

• 10:26Ryan Holiday?

  is not naturally inclined to do. That's the whole point of this. So think about that. Is it actually adding a skill to your skillset or giving you confidence in your ability to do something? That's what matters. Justin says, what do you think of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and how it relates to being a Stoic? Also, how can I further my studies on Stoicism? Are there any camps, training facilities, whatever? So I actually was doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu when I was writing Obstacles the Way. I lived in New Orleans and I would go to an awesome, I think it's called NOLA BJJ. I even thanked my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu professor at the end of it. I haven't done it in quite some time. I sort of got away from the training. I've just been busy and I found that I still wanted to run or swim every day and I just

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  don't have the time to do multiple hour-long exercise activities. So I think there's a ton of parallels between Stoicism and wrestling. Marcus Aurelius uses the metaphor of Stoicism and philosophy being similar to the approach of a boxer or a pancreast, which was an early form of mixed martial arts in the Roman Empire. So there's lots of interesting overlaps. You can see clearly the Stoics were so familiar with wrestling and fighting that it sort of permeates their writing in the way that like, you know, football analogies might appear in a politician's speeches. As far as like, training in Stoicism, I think Stoicism is something that you train yourself in by the reading you do, watching these videos or

• 11:50Ryan Holiday?

  listening to this podcast, that's one. Reading the books, like, how was Marcus Aurelius training in philosophy? Well, one, he had a philosophy instructor. His name is Junius Rusticus. He thanks him at the front of Meditations. You can look at that and he's someone I profile in Lives of the Stoics, which will be coming out in the fall of 2020. But, so he had a philosophy teacher and then he was doing his reading in philosophy, but then he was regularly writing and discoursing with himself and with others about Stoicism. That's what Meditations is. That's what Seneca's Letters of a Stoic are. Cato would have long dinner parties where he would talk about philosophy. So I don't think there's like, a school that you go to, but it is something you have to actively build a practice of in your life.

• 12:32Ryan Holiday?

  The only other thing, and not make it too much of a sales pitch, but we did build this program, Daily Stoic Life, which you can check out at dailystoic.com/life. There's a bunch of, it's also just on the Daily Stoic page, but like, we did, sensing that people wanted to train with each other, they wanted to talk to each other, they wanted, you know, the Daily Stoic email seven days a week, they wanted access to other stuff, they wanted our courses for free, all that kind of stuff you can get if you sign up for Daily Stoic. So, that's where I'd start. But I think this impulse you have to take your training to the next level is really great and should be encouraged. I think one interesting part of Stoicism is that, or philosophy, is This isn't something someone can give you. There isn't just a place that you show up.

• 13:15Ryan Holiday?

  It's more of an inward facing practice that you have to build. It's a routine you develop in your life. That's where this is going to come from. So, great question. Terry, Jim, and Justin, really appreciate it. If you guys have more questions, you can email us at [email protected]. These don't just have to be questions about Stoicism. These can be specific questions. They can be advice you want in your life about specific problems. Whatever you want, email us, [email protected]. And we will see you next week. You can subscribe to us on YouTube, obviously, or you can listen to this on our podcast or get our email at dailystoic.com.