This Is An Important Time in Your Life | How Do You Do Hard Things When Life Is Already Hard?

People probably thought Marcus Aurelius was strange. The time he spent alone in his room. The long walks he took by himself. There would be no Meditations https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/meditations without this quiet solitude, but more alarming, there would have been no Marcus Aurelius, either. 🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/: https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ San Diego, CA - February 5, 2026 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1527497619499?aff=oddtdtcreatorPhoenix, AZ - February 27, 2026 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1830981698549?aff=oddtdtcreator 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/, Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic, TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  People probably thought Marcus Aurelius was strange, the time he spent alone in his room, the long walks he took by himself. We know they thought it was strange that he was seen reading and writing in the Colosseum, ignoring the carnage at the games below. "The world today does not understand in either man or woman," Anne-Marie Lindbergh writes in "A Gift from the Sea." "They do not understand the need to be alone." Perhaps we ourselves don't understand it. We don't quite see the point, or as much as we enjoy it, we don't see it as much of a priority. As I discussed over on the Daily Dad Podcast in an email recently, "Parents will manage to make time for so many things, but quiet time for and by themselves is written off

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  as an impossible indulgence." But actually, Lindbergh writes, "These are among the most important times in one's life, when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows that he must be alone to create, the writer to work out his thoughts, the musician to compose, the saint to pray. There would be no meditations without this quiet solitude, or, more alarming, there would have been no Marcus Aurelius either. He had to take the time to retreat into his own soul," as he said, "to rejoice in perfect stillness." He needed to step away. He needed to evaluate and reflect, prepare and anticipate. He was an extremely busy man with endless amounts of demands on his person and his

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  schedule, but he insisted on stillness because he knew it was the key to his health and happiness, and his leadership depended on it. And the same is true for you.

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am back sitting in my chair at the office for the first time in some time. I was out with the family. We had a lovely break together. And now I'm back in the swing of things. Back in December, I did one of my last talks of the year. I was in Seattle for a live talk. Many of you came out. That was lovely. I loved seeing all of you and I loved answering your questions. The morning of that Seattle talk, I did a cold plunge. It was lovely. Jumped into Lake Washington and then I went in the sauna and then back in the lake and then back in the sauna. Did a cold plunge on the first, I was telling you. So I was thinking about

• 3:28Ryan Holiday?

  that. It was a little colder in Lake Washington in Seattle in December than it was in the Gulf of Mexico on January 1st. But it's been a lovely new year. So I'm glad to be back in the swing of things. And I'm going to bring you a couple of my favorite questions here now. If you want to ask me a question, I would love to see you. I'm going to be in San Diego on the 5th of February and Phoenix on the 27th of February. You can grab those tickets at dailystoiclive.com. I hope you are having a lovely new year and we'll get right into it.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  What's your guidance for some of us in the room that are early on in our Stoicism practice and journey and finding ways to stay consistent?

• 4:15Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Well, look, we're all early on in our Stoic journey because it's something you're supposed to do your whole life, right? And there's a striking passage in Meditations where Marx was kind of kicking himself. He's like, you're an old man and you're still doing these same things that you always did. You're still worried about this. You're stressed about that. What I take that to mean is that We never arrive. We never graduate. We're always going to be learning. I think it's important that we understand the Stoics aren't something you have read. They should be something you are reading. It is an ongoing practice. So, you know, I've, I've been reading and as I said, rereading meditations for going on 20 years now, and I still get new stuff out of it. So I would

• 4:59Ryan Holiday?

  just say, keep exploring, keep reading, find the, the different Stoics, read different translations, read interpretations of the translations. Just, just keep going back to it, dip in and dip out of it. And then, you know, there's going to be times when, when you drift, when you've come away from it, maybe it's not working for you, or you feel like you've got it. And then, you know, life will conveniently remind you that you're not even close and you, you need to, to go back to basics. And that's kind of how I've understood the, the process. To me, it's reading, it's talking, it's journaling, it's applying, and it's all of those things in a loop repeated over and over

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  and over again. And you get better and, and more advanced as you, as you go on, but you still struggle with the same basic things because these are fundamental human issues that we experience over and over again.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Considering tenants of courage and discipline, I would like to hear your thoughts on training in martial arts.

• 6:05Ryan Holiday?

  Um, I think it's great. Uh, I took my kids to jujitsu practice last week. Um, I think the sort of warrior or martial tradition has a lot of overlap with Stoicism. I think that's why, um, the, that my books have been popular there. It's why, um,

• 6:26Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics themselves would have, you know, trained in a lot of these things. I was actually, I was doing jujitsu pretty extensively when I was writing The Obstacles of the Way, so there's some little allusions and homages in there. So I can't speak to it too much because it's not like my main thing. But I think any, any craft, any art, any domain that, that is challenging you physically, mentally, spiritually, you know, is it, is a place to apply these Stoic principles. And in fact, also to learn things that you bring back to the Stoic principles.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Quick question I have is probably a bit too deep as all these other questions are. When you chose these different career arcs and paths, right? You know, I'd pretend like you'd know it all, but you probably didn't. So what made you choose to not pursue being a CMO versus writing a Stoic book, et cetera? For those of us, you know, thinking about the greater good versus our own personal dreams, how did you balance that?

• 7:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I would fully admit that I had no idea where all this was going. The story, the direction, the clarity, that's only something that gets retconned afterwards, right? The connection between them becomes clear afterwards. I didn't know, and I didn't know any of it would work. You know, I had this idea to write a book about Stoic philosophy, which, you know, my publisher thankfully indulged me in, but they didn't think it would work. And clearly, I didn't think it would work like this, or I would have asked for a lot more money, right? I was just like happy that they said yes, because I had no idea. So all of this stuff becomes clear later. I remember I was at a, a marketing conference when I was the director of marketing in American

• 8:10Ryan Holiday?

  Apparel. I remember I would go to this marketing event every year in New York City. And I went the first year, and I looked around, and I was the youngest person there, and I was the only one not in a suit. And I went the next year, same thing. And then the third year, I went and I thought, you know, if I keep coming to this thing, I'm going to be in a suit. And I just knew that that wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. And so sometimes just knowing what you don't want to do, the direction you don't want to go in is really, really important. And so I, you know, I kind of made a hard right turn. And I, I knew I wanted to be a writer at some level. I knew I loved books. I didn't know what my first book would be or how it would work, but that was the first, you know, sort of decision that I made. And then

• 8:52Ryan Holiday?

  With the success of that, I had a little bit more freedom to decide what I wanted to write about and I took another kind of, you know, hard turn. And, and so I, you know, I do trust my, my gut a little bit, but I, I just try to think, you know, is this what I want to spend the rest of my life doing? And if the answer is no, let's try to get out of it as soon as possible.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  My question is, we keep on doing challenging things, interesting things, reading, consuming more information, doing one thing after another. When do you really take a pause and step back to see or retrospect, basically, to see what we are learning from it or what can we do better? How do you do that? I, I basically struggle with retrospecting. So I would like to learn from you.

• 9:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, this is, this is really important. It can't just all be inputs all the time. You have to step back. You have to have time and space for reflection. There's a passage in Meditations where Marcus is like, dude, you gotta throw your books away and stop, you know, you stop this. And, and I think people who love learning can sort of know exactly what he's talking about there. I like to, you know, sort of, although I do try to read and, and, you know, learn always, I try to go, hey, that, that it's more of like it ebbs and flows or there's seasons. And so, you know, sometimes I'm in a, in a really research heavy phase. I'm trying to explore something or I'm doing a deep dive, like I really want to understand something. And then other times I go, you know, this

• 10:18Ryan Holiday?

  is just a, this is more of a, you know, like when you put all the dishes in the sink and you go, I'm just gonna let it settle. I'm gonna let it soak, right? Then I'm gonna come back. Sometimes it's a soaking phase.

• 10:30Speaker 05

  I always have like these big ambitious projects in my head and I can completely think about how it's gonna turn out. And then, you know, you get a lot of dopamine, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And then at some point you are just, you are so full of dopamine and then you actually have to do it. And yeah, you start procrastinating.

• 10:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  I'm just curious if you have like multiple, just, yeah, strategies to, to do it.

• 10:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 05

  Things you can say to yourself, for example.

• 11:01Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, I, I don't think there's any sort of magical solution other than just, just doing it. Right. And some, sometimes it's the, it's the thinking and the planning and the talking and the telling everyone about it. It's like you're getting all of the validation before you've started. And so oftentimes when I have a project or something, I'm like, I'm just going to start this thing. I'm not going to tell anyone about it. I'm not going to make it a whole big thing. I'm just going to start like, what is the smallest thing I can do to get started? So that's kind of how I think about it is I try not to talk about projects while I'm working on them. I don't want to, I don't want people to tell me how excited they are for me or how great it's going to be

• 11:42Ryan Holiday?

  or any of that. Cause I feel like it's like I'm, I'm getting in advance on the thing that actually I, I really want to just go earn. So I just try to, I just try to get after it and try not to overthink it.

• 11:53Speaker 06

  I'm going to go, uh, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on you. The, the phone booth is on the stage. Marcus Aurelius pops out. You've got like five minutes to pick his brain, maybe go a little deeper on something. What are, what are you going to chat with Marcus about?

• 12:09Ryan Holiday?

  Well, as I said, the, the big, the big question is like, what happened with Commodus, right? Who puts a teenager in charge of the Roman Empire? That seems insane. So I'd obviously be very fascinated with that. I guess maybe here's a little nerdier one. Seneca's writings don't appear anywhere in Marcus Aurelius's writings. So is that on purpose? You know, does he, is he mad at Seneca? Is this a, as a deliberate snub? So I'd love to know what he thinks about that. I, I would have obviously millions and millions of questions, but those would be two.

• 12:42Speaker 07

  So my question is, how do you do hard things when hard things are happening to you? You know, you mentioned, you know, like wars and famine. Unfortunately we live in war. There's like wars happening right now and famine. And people who have family who are like actively losing parents or partners. And it feels surreal. So I'm just wondering, how do you get yourself to do hard things, knowing that?

• 13:04Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Look, if you live in a war zone, you don't need to do a cold plunge. Okay? Obviously. The idea is we do the hard things because in the future, life has hard things in store for us. And ideally, like, we want to be prepared for that. Epictetus was saying, like, the whole point of the philosophy is to get to a point where any of the things that happen to us in life, you're able to go, this is what I trained for. So the idea is like, how do you put yourself when things are good? When things are easy, speaking of wars, he says, you know, just as an army undergoes a hard winter's training, right? Because in the ancient world, Roman armies couldn't fight in the winter. So they would train in the winter to fight in what they would call the fighting season, which is the warm months.

• 13:48Ryan Holiday?

  And so when things are good, or when you are not experiencing adversity or difficulty or whatever it is, how are you training and preparing yourself so that when those things happen, you're able to deal with them? That, to me, is what it's about.

• 14:09Ryan Holiday?

  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.