Face Down in the Moment | Ask Daily Stoic

The thing about life is that it’s not a thing. Life is a series of moments. As the great Annie Dillard said, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives—and how we spend our moments is how we spend our days.📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive pre-order bonuses at https://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.

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 read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Face down in the moment.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  The thing about life is that it's not a thing. Life is a series of moments. As the great Annie Dillard said, "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives, and how we spend our moments is how we spend our days." The problem is that most of us are too busy to notice these moments as they come. We are not present. We are preoccupied. The Stoics had this word "ataraxia" to describe someone riven by external and internal forces. Marcus Aurelius contrasted this with the person who is able to be like the rock that the waves crash against, but eventually fall still. That's what presence is. Slowing down, being where your feet are, being in the moment. When you are caught up

• 1:42Ryan Holiday?

  in the ebb and flow of external forces, your life passes you by with increasing speed each and every day. If you cannot stop and be present, if you cannot be the rock that lets those waves crash against you instead of carry you away, then you will miss all of it. And how tragic is that? Greatness, happiness, contentment, these things are what life can be, but only if we choose to experience them, only if we slow down, only if we show up and stay in the moment. This is what my book, Stillness is the Key, is about. Slowing down, being present, locking into that. That connection with yourself, with other people, with the world around you.

• 2:24Ryan Holiday?

  And I think that that stillness is all my happiest moments, all my best, most productive moments, they're all rooted in that, not frenzy, not distraction, not temptation, not chasing, but being, being, not doing. Stillness is the key. I think you'll love it. Debut at number one on the New York Times Bestseller List, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Now you can get it as an audiobook. I read it. You can get it signed here at the Painted Porch. Get it in a bunch of different formats. You can check that out at store.dailystoic.com or come out to the Painted Porch here on Historic Main Street in Bastrop, Texas, or anywhere you get your books. I just hope you read it and you do deserve stillness and I wish you very much of it. Enjoy.

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of Ask Daily Stoic. You send me Ryan Holiday questions to info@dailystoic 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 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' behaviors."

• 3:53Ryan Holiday?

  We talk about how to recognize what is or isn't in your control. I mean, this is 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, right? 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 to stop, right?

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  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 I realize there's things I control, there's things I don't control, and there's things where I'm understanding that I have influence, but I can direct them, but I can't ultimately control them.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  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 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

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  about whether I can handle difficult things because 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 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, 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.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  Doing things in a new way. It's I think about, you know, we interviewed David Epstein, and he talked about 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 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 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,

• 7:35Ryan Holiday?

  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 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 skill set or giving you confidence in your ability to do something? That's what matters.

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  Okay. 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 bringing 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 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

• 8:44Ryan Holiday?

  of Stoicism and philosophy being similar to like the approach of a boxer or a pancreast, which was a 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 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.

• 9:29Ryan Holiday?

  He thanks him at the front of Meditations, you can look at that. And 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, right? 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. 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, this isn't something someone can give you. There isn't just a place that you show up.

• 10:14Ryan 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.

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoic, the Stoic Pochyle, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space, but we have made a special digital version of the Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about, like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts, is interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism. To be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic Meditations over the weekend, just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of Meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts, and, this is the best part, all

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  our Daily Stoic courses and challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at dailystoiclife.com.