You Can’t Be Fragile Like This | Ask DS

Cato, one of the most vaunted and towering Stoics, built a reputation and a career out of his refusal to give an inch in the face of pressure. He fought to keep Rome as it was, as it always had been. He refused political compromise in every form. Cato was Cato. He could never be anything but rigid, upright, and strong. But Cato’s inflexibility did not always best serve the public good.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions during the Q&A session of the Daily Stoic Stoicism 101 Course. Topics covered include the similarities between Stoicism and tenants of the 12-Step program, how to do the deep work that you enjoy without getting bogged down by the less enjoyable tasks that come along with it, and how to deal with information overload.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks, some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members, or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:45Ryan Holiday?

  You can't be fragile like this. Cato, one of the most vaunted and towering Stoics, built a reputation and a career out of his refusal to give an inch in the face of pressure. He fought to keep Rome as it was, as it always had been, and he refused political compromise in every form. Cato was Cato, and he could never be anything but rigid and upright and strong. But Cato's inflexibility did not always best serve the public good. Indeed, no one did more than Cato to rage against the Republic's fall, but few did more to bring that fall to pass. When Pompey, one of Rome's greatest generals and political forces, sought an alliance by proposing marriage to one of Cato's relatives, Cato's dismissive

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  refusal led Pompey to ally with Caesar instead, and their combined strength led to a radical shift in Rome's politics, overturning the longstanding traditions that Cato wanted to uphold. His refusal to compromise, his inflexibility, while driven by moral principles, ultimately ended in crushing defeat. We recently talked about Robert Greene's answer to the question, "What is the most Stoic law of power?" Robert's answer, that the main law is to have power over yourself, and that idea seeps into each of the 48 laws of power, is actually captured in Law 48, Assume Formlessness. "Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed," Robert writes, "the best way to protect

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water." While we can admire the high integrity and uprightness of the Catos of the world, the truth is that the unflexible, the uncompromising, pure person who cannot adjust, who cannot conceive of doing things any way but their own, is extremely fragile. We have to be able to be flexible, to change, to adapt. In a world filled with chaos and uncertainty and change, the Stoic said, "We must cultivate the ability to be adaptable, resilient, and in harmony with the ever-changing currents of life." In a great exchange between Epictetus and one of his students, the student says, "Tell me what to do." And Epictetus says, "It would be better to say, 'Make my mind adaptable to any circumstances.'" Rigidity is fragile.

• 2:50Ryan Holiday?

  Formlessness is unbreakable. If you want some lessons from the master on formlessness, you can come see Robert Greene and I in conversation, sharing a stage, talking for a couple hours. Very soon, we're going to be talking live in Los Angeles on the 19th of September and live in Seattle on September 21st. He's one of my favorite people in the world. You've heard him on this podcast many, many times. If you want to ask him questions, if you want to come to the VIP meet and greet, if you want to see Robert and I do what we do, it's going to be a unique, special show in each spot, never to be seen before or again. And I'm really excited to do that. You can grab those tickets at ryanholiday.net/tour.

• 3:34Ryan Holiday?

  I'll link to it in today's show notes. But I hope to see you all in person in September, Seattle and Los Angeles. ryanholiday.net/tour. Come see Robert Greene and I do what we do and learn some formlessness.

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We're doing a Q and A today that's actually drawn from the Stoicism 101 course. I think it's one of the best courses we've done over at Daily Stoic. If you're looking to get introduced to Stoicism, you want to take your study of it to the next level, you want to go back to basics, or you want to build a really good foundation of what Stoicism is and how you can use it, that's what the course is about. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But this is drawing from one of the many Q and As we've done as part of the session. People got to come in and ask me a bunch of questions. That's where today's Q and A is coming from. It's just a selection. And I hope you join us in Stoicism 101. You can ask some of your own questions. I'll link to that in today's show notes

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  or just type in Stoicism 101 in the Daily Stoic store.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks for calling on me, Ryan.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Really happy I got to join this one. I'm at work and I've been kind of going back and forth.

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, awesome.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. I heard about you. Somebody, I think it was on ESPN, was talking about Nick Saban and Bill Belichick being fans of Obstacle the Way. So I went out and got a copy. I love it. So my question, somebody had mentioned the similarities between Buddhism and Stoicism. I'm seeing a lot of similarities between Stoicism and 12-step literature and recovery. One major difference that I see is the idea of the will. Right? So in Stoicism, it seems like you need a strong will.

• 5:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  You need to be diligent. You need to be, you know, on top of your every action where in 12-step, it's the idea of the will is what gets us into problems, right? And we have to turn our will over. So is turning the will over in Stoicism just a dedication to the four virtues?

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  I think, you know, that's an interesting question and I think it's complicated, right? I definitely get the idea, both in Buddhism and in 12-step, the sort of the willful will, your sort of sense that you're the center of the universe, that this is all about you, you know, that that is what gets us into trouble. At the same time, I would argue the Stoics probably agree with that. And I say this in obstacle, when we think about will, we often think willpower. But I think for the Stoics, a big part of will was that idea of acceptance, of, you know, sort of accepting one's powerlessness over a situation

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  and bringing your willpower to the endurance side of things rather than the assertion side of things. So I would, I think they're probably more aligned than it might seem.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's some phrases that just jump out at me, progress, not perfection. You know, yeah, the Serenity Prayer is straight out of the Four Virtues, it sounds like, which is amazing.

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  Definitely is.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Well, thank you.

• 7:03Ryan Holiday?

  Of course. No, thank you.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Well, I think this was coming a little bit earlier. You're talking about the easiest way to kind of get into those deep work states, those flow kind of states is doing what you like. But obviously, in like pursuit of doing the things you love, you're going to run into things that you don't like doing. So like, I'm sure you love running the daily stoic and doing your writing. But I'm sure you deal with like suppliers or whatever, and maybe like the business side of things isn't your favorite part or something. I'm just spitballing. For me, like the student, like I love learning about some of these things I do, but then I may have to take a course that I don't really like.

• 7:47Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  And so how do you like still do that deep work when it's not something you want to do? Because obviously, there's going to be times like that.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I did a video about this, I think over the weekend that was helpful to me. I first heard the phrase from Tim Ferriss. I don't know if he invented it or not, but the idea is like sort of make before you mention, or sorry, make before you manage. And so to me, the idea is like I do the creative sort of flow oriented tasks first, and then I do the other stuff later, right? So like sort of I try to think about it's like the first half of the day is for the creative stuff. The second half of the day is for the administrative stuff. So that I don't want to burn myself out and then have to go do the important thing.

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  I want to have already done the important stuff because if the administrative task takes an extra day, so be it. But if I'm putting off the important stuff, maybe I'll never get that moment again.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  All right. Yeah, that's helpful. I appreciate it.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Great. Thanks, Ryan. I was introduced to you a while ago with Stillness. A bunch of us at work were reading it, and then it took me into a bunch of your other books.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, awesome.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I've read some of the novels you recommended, like Hurricane and the Banana King, and I'm reading A Man in Full right now. You've got the sessions here now. We've got a couple of emails that come out every morning. And literally, for the past few days, I've had a headache. And I'm wondering, like, I think it's information overload. I'm sure eating up a lot of, I'm loving it, but I'm also finding it's too much right now. And so any advice on how to pare back? I don't want to get burnt out, but I think I need to pare back. But you provide so much content at the same time. You know, it's like, how do we pick and choose? And what do you do? A lot of your chapters are

• 9:48Speaker 03

  short chapters. So I think, you know, that's intentional. So.

• 9:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. So it's a great question. Um, this, all the stuff I put out is not really supposed to be consumed by one person, right? So the idea is that different people consume in different mediums. Some people like videos. Some people like audio. Some people like emails. Some people like books. The idea is I put a lot of stuff out there and I, I, I hope that people, a small percentage of it reaches each person, right? So definitely pick and choose what you like, what, what fits into your life, what, what is the medium that's most conducive to your learning. But I would say I, I, I get to that place too, where there's just too much, you're too busy, you're fried, you're realizing the retention is not there. I think

• 10:36Ryan Holiday?

  the best thing you do there is you, you step back, you just, you take a minute and, and you, you, you allow yourself to recover. This goes to the, the point we're talking about as far as recovery goes, right? If you're not resting and recovering, you, you're, you're probably at some point of diminishing return. So I, I definitely think about that. Although I heard a good piece of advice the other day where someone was saying like, if you ever get to a place where you're too tired to do anything but scroll on your phone or watch TV, you should go to sleep. Like, the point is to go to sleep, not to just stay up and do more mindless activities, but to go to sleep. So usually when I find myself

• 11:18Ryan Holiday?

  at that place, I try to remind myself like, this is probably even deeper than just like not reading. This is like, I'm not taking care of myself and I need to. Literally go to bed and start over the next day or the next week or whatever.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  I wonder how many people are actually struggling with that now because I do the number of times my kids wake me up on the couch or my light's still on in my room, all that sort of stuff.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, totally.