A Stoic Test I Didn’t Expect

In the span of three days, Ryan found himself in a series of situations that were exciting, surreal, and a little terrifying. The kind of moments where the Stoic ideas suddenly get put to the test. SPECIAL OFFER exclusively for podcast listeners 👉 Go to dailystoic.com/spring and enter code DSPOD20 at checkout to get 20% off the Spring Forward Challenge! Challenge yourself to spring forward and become the person you aspire to be. The Spring Forward Challenge starts March 20, 2026.🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan and welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am still alive, so that's the good news. It was a very, very crazy period for me. Okay, so I dropped my kids off at school on Thursday morning, did a nice, nice run around to Town Lake. I went to the office, took a shower, got ready, did some work. And then, then I flew to Las Vegas where I did a talk to a lovely group of business leaders. That was fun, but then I think I finished at like 8:30, although actually before that I had to get something to eat. The thing I could eat at was this like steakhouse in the, in the hotel we were in, in this casino.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  It was a, what, what is my life experience as I, as I waited for a restaurant in a casino to open at 4:00 PM with all the other old people and degenerate gamblers? And then I sat at the bar doing research for the Stockdale book while I waited for my food. And I just thought, this is a strange pairing of things. Anyways, did the talk, got finished at like 8:15, rushed back to the room and then I had to get in the car and I had to drive to Phoenix. It was the only way I could get to Phoenix in time for what I had to do the next morning. They told me it would be like a four and a half hour drive. It was more like a five and a half hour drive. And I did not calculate there would be a two hour time change. I wish someone could have given me a heads up about that. So I got in extremely late.

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  I think I got in at like three or 3:30, I crashed. And then I got up and I went and I gave a talk to the Chicago Cubs, which was really cool. I wasn't expecting that, but it was fun. You know, it's not, it's not every day that you get to talk ancient philosophy to a professional baseball team, but that's what I got to do here. Let me, let me bring you a couple of minutes of that. I think you might like it. The core exercise in Stoic philosophy is this exercise called the dichotomy of control. Is it up to me? It's not up to me. And when we focus our energy on what's not up to us, we're wasting our energy. And we focus our energy on what's up to us, we have a chance to make a difference, to get better. And so the Stoics would go, look, I don't

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  control the weather, I control how I play in the weather. I don't control the umpires, I control how I respond to the umpires. I don't control what my coaches are doing, I don't control what the media is saying, I don't control what's going on at home. You don't control most of what's happening, but you do control your thoughts, your opinions, your reactions, your attitude, your work ethic. You control ultimately how you play, right? You don't control how they play, you control how you play. And so Stoic philosophy is this idea of, I want to take this and get better for what I'm having to deal with. I want to use this as practice. I want to use this as reps. And so what we do is we're trying to take all that's happening and turn it to our advantage. I think when people hear

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  this word Stoic, they think has no emotions. That's what lowercase Stoic means. It's not that. I do think a Stoic is trying to be less emotional, because those emotions are probably not going to make the situation better. The Stoics say the way you turn an obstacle upside down is you, you look first at how you perceive it. What's the story you're telling yourself about it? Then what's the action you're taking about it? And then what's the attitude and the determination you're bringing to solve it? And so the Stoics wanted to think about how you can take this, you turn it into something that allows you to grow. I talked to the Seahawks a couple of years ago, and I was talking to John Snyder, the GM. And he was saying that one of the things that he looks at when he's evaluating

• 3:50Ryan Holiday?

  players is, how have they dealt with adversity in the past? He wants a guy that maybe struggled a little bit in high schools, maybe got a little bit in trouble in college, right? Maybe didn't work out on a team. He's looking for how they down stat from something that didn't go their way. Because that's what life is. And in a way, that's the sort of ultimate skill, is how do you deal with situations that are outside your control? And how do you get better for having been in those situations? If you get worse when things don't go your way, you're not going to do great. If you get better when things don't go your way, if you can play in any and all conditions.

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  And you get better.

• 4:32Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so then I went back to the hotel, went on a run there. Was it a canal or a river staying near the Biltmore, not at the Biltmore, although I have stayed there before, actually, when I gave a talk to the NFL owners meeting seven or so years ago, I had stayed there. So I sort of suddenly knew where I was. I went for a nice, long run and then I got ready and I went and did another talk. I talked to the Arizona Diamondbacks, which was cool. And I felt weird giving the same talk like back to back. It just made me uncomfortable. So I was like, I'm going to do a new talk for each one, which meant I had to come up with a new talk in that very brief interim period. So I came up with a second talk. Let me bring you a little bit of that. This one, I was like physically in the locker room with the Arizona Diamondbacks who were

• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

  there for spring training. It was pretty cool and I wanted to give them like some Stoic lessons. So that's what I did. Who here knows what positive visualization is, right? Imagine things going well. The Stoics, that's all well and good. They also do negative visualization, right? So imagining it going quite poorly. The Stoics would say it's better to do a pre-mortem than a post-mortem, right? A post-mortem is great for the doctor. It's not so great for the patient who died. You want to imagine what could go wrong and then you want to prepare for that in advance. So the Stoics are saying that what is unexpected, what we don't want to think about, right? Lands the heaviest on us. So the Stoics are always thinking about the worst case scenario, not in a way that makes

• 6:00Ryan Holiday?

  them anxious, not because they want to suffer in advance, but because they want to be prepared. For the Stoics, like the word Stoic means sort of in English, it means, you know, not having a big reaction, being calm and under control, not being emotional. Part of the reason the Stoics have this reputation is because they don't get rattled by things because things don't surprise them. Their view is that nothing should ever happen to a wise person that is a surprise. Seneca said, "The only thing that a leader is not allowed to ever say is, wow, I didn't think that would happen." Like your job as the leader is to think that could happen. And what would I do if that happened? Where do I need to be if that happens? What would my plan be if that happens? Now, look, most of the time, these negative circumstances won't happen and that's great.

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  It's better to be pleasantly surprised that they don't happen than unpleasantly surprised if they do happen. Then I went back to my hotel room and immediately crashed. I took about an hour nap. I slept through my alarm, which was not, not good. But that's how tired I was. And then I had to head over to a performing arts center where I was doing a talk to you guys, to Daily Stoic fans. I'm going to announce some more dates of the tour, but this was the last of four shows that I've been doing over the last couple of months. And so I went in and was doing what was effectively my fourth talk in 24 hours. Each one of those talks being a different talk, this time to about a thousand fans at the Daily Stoic. So that was a crazy, cool experience.

• 7:30Ryan Holiday?

  Here's something I shared with them, which I think you might like. That's what I talked to the Cubs and the Diamondbacks about today, right? Like, how do you, in a world where you're going to fail more times than you're going to succeed, where tons of people are watching you and criticizing you, how do you push all that aside and come fresh to the thing in front of you as you have to be, right? How can you get horrible news and then show up for your kids? Again, going to the idea of like, false evidence appearing real and the mental discipline required. It's the ability to know by the sound or the sight or the pattern of things, what they mean, whether they're important or not, real or not, whether you should trust them or not.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  And so this, even keel, this discipline, to be able to stay focused and to stay clear-headed in fundamentally disorienting times and situations is, is like what the work of discipline is. It's not just being strong and fast and working long hours. So I think a lot about, you know, how do I structure my day and my life to be conducive to that?

• 8:46Ryan Holiday?

  So obviously, thanks to everyone that came out. It was, it was really cool to see everyone there in Phoenix. As I said, sold out, I think 950 or 1,000 people. My parents were there. It was just lovely. Good way to wrap up the tour. I'm excited for more dates, as I was saying. Saying, I'll tell you about those later. Okay. So what does this have to do with me still being alive? None of this seems that crazy. Well, I went to dinner with my parents after, again, totally fine. Not, not at all why I was in physical danger. And then I went to bed. I had to get up at four 30 in the morning to catch a flight home. That landed, went home, picked up the kids and the wife and took them to see Harry Potter with a symphony orchestra at the Bass Concert Hall. Again, really cool, not dangerous, very lovely.

• 9:29Ryan Holiday?

  All of this leading up to what I had known for a while was going to happen on Sunday, but I, I guess I hadn't really thought about what it entailed. We have a friend, his name is Mike Birch. He is an awesome dude. He is the chief operating officer of Speedway Motorsports. And every year NASCAR comes and does a race there at the F1 track, Circuit of America's track, which is not far from my ranch. And the first year he asked if we wanted to come out and it was really cool and we've been coming every year. And then last year he said, Hey, do you want to drive the pace car? Cause I saw they have like a celebrity drive the pace car that gets the car started every year. And I said, I mean, yeah, I would love to, but literally anyone would be a better choice. Not because I'm, I'm a bad driver. I guess I'm okay, but like,

• 10:14Ryan Holiday?

  don't you guys have like actual famous people do it? But wouldn't, wouldn't there be someone that would be a slightly more exciting draw for the NASCAR fans than a person who writes about an obscure school of ancient philosophy? And he said, no, no, no, I really want you to do it. And I said, okay, look, I will agree to do it. But you have to agree to replace me with someone better if the opportunity arises at any point. And he said, okay. And so, um, I just didn't think about it for several months. And then he phoned up a couple of weeks ago and said, no, no, no, you're still doing it, right? And I said, yeah, I guess, I guess I am. So that's what I knew was in store for me on Sunday. So I got up, drove down to the track.

• 10:54Ryan Holiday?

  The funny thing was pulling in, so we were parking in the paddock area, which is where all the drivers and staff and people working on the race were parking and we went into park. And like all the spots were full and was like this whole thing. First they were like, you can't park there, but then we've specifically been told. We had to park there and so there was like these radio people going back and forth. I was thinking of that Randy Blythe thing we talked about when he was on the podcast about like not trying to big time someone with your with your badge, reminding yourself that this this person who's stopping you is in fact doing your job. I tried to go, no, no, I totally understand you. You're not supposed to let any people in and you think the lot is full, but they specifically told us

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  to go there. So let's just get someone on the phone. Let me pull out of the way. But it was the whole thing because that person was stressed. Anyways, finally, we get into the lot through this back windy way that was much more accessible on on Chip's golf cart. But I'm weaving our F-150 through and we finally get there. And, you know, the security guard tried to tell us not to park there had been right. There was basically no spots. And so there's finally this sort of one spot. And let's just say it was a tight parking job. And it did not do great for my confidence to have to do like a 14 point turn, three round go of parking in there. I was just trying to

• 12:17Ryan Holiday?

  instill as much doubt into myself and much doubt into the people that brought me as possible to show that I was not great at at a vehicle in a in tight spaces while people are watching. Because then these people came out to help and they were trying to steer me in and it's that's like, no, no, I just, I want to do this privately. I don't want, I don't want anyone looking. And then I was like, oh, wait, so am I bad at driving when when I have an audience? That's, that's not going to be great with 35,000 people watching. And then, and then, of course, the whole start of the race on my shoulders. And they said, we're going to take you around the track first, just so you see what it is. And I've been on that track before in the month of May, they let you ride your bikes on it. And also, you can drive around it at Christmas. They

• 13:01Ryan Holiday?

  do a Christmas lights display, but I've done it on on my bike a bunch. And, you know, my nine year old can handle it. So I didn't think it would be that crazy. But just driving around in a Toyota, which is what they had us drive around. I texted Samantha from the passenger seat. I said, this is genuinely terrifying. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this. And then they explained that I had to drive around the track. I had to do three laps at a consistent speed of 40 miles an hour the entire time. And there's S turns, there's hairpin turns, there's this giant hill at the top. And, and I thought it was like a symbolic thing, but no, no, the cars don't have speedometers in them like the NASCAR cars don't.

• 13:40Ryan Holiday?

  And so they follow the pace car to like, set their RPMs to get a sense of what speed is what? And so it actually does matter. Like you can screw it up. And also there's tens of thousands of fans watching. Did my training and then, uh, you know, the moment drew nearer and nearer. And, uh, uh, I gotta say, there was a pit of dread in, in my stomach. There was a moment of levity in between, which is they do all the announcements beforehand. And they're like, okay, you're the first one up. And I said, what do you mean? And like, they do this, like this big stage with all this, uh, you know, fireworks and this crowd. And there's a DJ and an announcer in there. And then I'm standing back behind this banner. He goes, okay, just wait till you hear your name.

• 14:25Ryan Holiday?

  And then I hear, and now one of the world's best selling living philosophers, Ryan Holiday. And then the crowd was just like, huh? And then this smoke goes off. I don't think there was fireworks, but I gotta say, it was one of the most absurd ways, maybe in all of human history, for somebody who writes about Greek and Roman philosophy to ever be introduced. And to what crowd I was being introduced to. I just, I just thought it was absolutely amazing. I flash back to a story, actually a tale in Lives of the Stoics, where this group of philosophers is sent from Athens to Rome on a diplomatic mission.

• 15:05Ryan Holiday?

  And philosophy had been then a Greek domain and the Romans were sort of the, the powerful new upstarts. And this stoic named Diogenes is there, a philosopher named Carnetis is there. And Some of the people are wowed and then other people like Cato the Elder, this is the great, great grandfather of Cato the Younger are just horrified. They're like, what is this shit? And actually, Cato the Elder proposed that all philosophers be banned from Rome forever. This is how horrified he was. And I just thought, you know, this is a fish out of water moment, but it was also lovely and fun and everyone was super nice. Got to spend some time with Brad Kesselowski beforehand and read some of the books. He's been on the podcast.

• 15:50Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, let me bring you a little chunk of that conversation. You might actually get a sense of where they align.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  This is the reoccurring thing to being a race car driver that makes it difficult. When you get scared, you have the same reaction over and over again. Your heart rate elevates, you get kind of the spider flight. And more importantly, you hold your breath. And I don't care who you are or how strong you are. That's when the mental side starts to carry over to the physical side. And if you hold your breath for minutes at a time, you lose your energy and you

• 16:24Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  borderline pass out, which is what I could tell happened to Michael. So the two really connect. They play together. And as I've gotten older, this has come more naturally to me, especially as a race car driver, but in other areas of my life, I've gotten to a spot, Ryan, where I'm kind of able to, you know, quote unquote, turn the fear off like a light switch. Like I'm in the car, look, I know something can happen to me. But you know what? I'm okay with that. You know, I'm not afraid of getting hurt. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm more afraid of just not performing. And so you literally turn the fear off. And when you do that, when you can mentally turn those other things off,

• 17:10Speaker 01

  the physical side gets so much easier. And I tell people all the time that if you have the right mentality,

• 17:19Speaker 01

  If it's a nice day with respect to not an overly hot day, if your car is handling really well, I am convinced that your average 12 year old could do my job.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Uh, the problem is those days are very, very seldom. You're almost always fighting something with the car. You're almost always fighting. It's a really hot day. You're most always fighting, hey, I'm going 200 mile an hour in a pack of cars and what was that guy doing? I don't know about him. I'm a little nervous about him. There's some kind of situation I'm not comfortable with. And so there's all these things that play into it. So when people ask me about the, the physical and the mental, it's, it's really difficult to, to create like a percentage base, like 75% mental, 25% physical. Because honestly, i- if you can have the right mental mentality and you have these variables under control externally, the physical side is a very low percentage of what I do.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  It's just the reality is in very few situations can you control those variables? You do the best you can to control what you can control, when you can control it.

• 18:35Ryan Holiday?

  I could feel myself getting excited, not excited, like nerves, right? As the, the ride in the car was coming up and I, I just tried to, you know, get some deep breaths, calm myself down. As Taylor Swift says, you need to calm down. I just knew being, being freaked out, being worried, being anxious was not going to make it better. And actually what I needed to do was bring all of my attention and focus to the thing. And at the same time, one of the reasons you do training is so that in those high stakes situations, the training can take over. When I was talking to the baseball teams, I, I was talking about that famous Yogi Berra line about how you can't think and hit at the same time.

• 19:17Ryan Holiday?

  I talked about Sean Green's wonderful book, The Way of Baseball, where he just, he talks about how. You really have to get out of your head. You chop wood, carry water. Now, driving a race car was something I had only trained for a few minutes previously, but I'd also been driving like my whole life, right? I just drove five hours in one stretch in the dark. I'm decently good at driving, right? And so you know what you're supposed to do. Like you know how to do the thing. It's usually what happens is you get in your own head and then you're not able to do the thing that you're actually quite capable of doing.

• 19:56Ryan Holiday?

  So it's about like getting out of your own head and allowing the training and the instinct to take over. I even find like when I'm writing, when I'm really consciously thinking about what I'm trying to do, I'm not doing it well, but when I allow the other stuff to melt away and to focus and to lock in, you know, in golf, the harder you are trying to golf well, the worse you're gonna do. So I just tried to get out of the moment, but also get into the moment. And I remember when I had Patrick Dempsey on the podcast, he talked about how in the race car, that was one of the few places he felt totally present and locked in, not not that dissimilar to acting.

• 20:40Ryan Holiday?

  I did text him for some advice, but I think we were in different time zones. So I had to remember what he'd said on the podcast instead. I'd be curious, how different is your getting ready to race sort of protocol to like getting ready to be on camera? Are they similar? Do you have to get in a similar mental headspace?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you do. You, it's like, once again, it's preparation, right? If you're coming in and you haven't done the preparation where you know your lines backwards and forwards and, and there's a lot of noise offset, you'll go up. But if you're prepared, you're just like, oh, okay. I noticed that. I'm in the moment, I'm present, I'm in the flow. And it's the same thing that when you're in the car. I think the, the great thing about the acting that's helped me in the cars, I'm really comfortable being private in a public world.

• 21:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Like I know I got a lot of eyes on me. I know there's a lot of pressure. So I make one mistake, that's what's going to be televised. I was racing at LeMans and it was a lot of media attention and a lot of people wanted to come up, you know, because they know who I am.

• 21:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  And my technique was like, you know, the obstacle is the way, right?

• 21:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  So, very much the same way. So if someone comes up to me and they say, hi, can you take a picture? And I'm like, yes.

• 21:46Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  And because then it would force me to be in the moment.

• 21:49Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  So that's how I would say my whole thing. And if I had to go and take care of, say, my sponsors, Tag Heuer, they want me to go over and do a press conference or something. Okay, that's what I need to do now.

• 21:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  So I need to be aware, because situational awareness is so important in racing.

• 22:03Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Right? Because you've got all this activity going. So I used all of those moments as a preset. And some people weren't. Some people had the headsets on and they would just go for it. For me, I would take the time to breathe and it would allow me to remember, okay, take a breath, look the person in the eye, connect.

• 22:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  Because if I didn't connect, I felt really bad.

• 22:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  And I was like, I'm thinking about that moment that's just happened. I'm not thinking about what's happening right now.

• 22:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Right? Which ties into all the work that you're talking about, which is what, and I think, was it Seneca about, you know, your, your mind is what's gonna, these stories that are in your mind are not necessarily gonna happen.

• 22:39Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  So then you, you just need to be present and it's the hardest thing to do. So for me, the racing is really the best thing for me. It's like sort of going to church or temple or wherever you wanna worship, because it's the spiritual journey of that.

• 22:54Ryan Holiday?

  Sometimes when you're intimidated by something or you're scared by something or in your own head about it, one of the things I'd go is like, is this actually that hard? Like objectively, like people who do things, where do they rank this thing? Now, obviously racing cars is really, really hard, but I tried to think, like, who else has done this before me? Right? They do these races all over the country, not on this track. This track is uniquely difficult because it's an F1 track and it's not going around in a circle. But I just tried to think like, Some hangover celebrities have done this. Some actors and actresses, you know, comedians have done this. Like people who are no more or less qualified to do this than me. In fact, I'm sure some, some, some really fundamentally unqualified people have done this.

• 23:38Ryan Holiday?

  So people who are not good at driving have done this. And if it was really, if the stakes really were that high, if it really was that dangerous, they obviously would have done more training and probably had a slightly more rigorous selection process. There's a, there's a line in this book I read, it's a novel called Galveston. We actually carry it in the bookstore, but I think about this line in the book all the time. It's from the guy that wrote True Detective, actually. Anyways, this person's talking about how she needs to get a job or something and she's a little intimidated by it. And he says, "The dumbest people in the world have managed to get jobs." And this is actually a very stoic thing, right? Sort of walking yourself through, is this actually that hard? Is it actually that scary?

• 24:24Ryan Holiday?

  Have other people done it? In Meditations, Marxros talks about, he says, "If it's humanly possible, know that you can do it also." So I thought to myself, this is a process. They put people through this, every race, they've already had two of them this year. They know what they're doing and it's gonna be all right. Right? Again, some other people managed to pull this off. So stressing about it, worrying about it, making this thing bigger than it is, that's not helping you or them. So you go, who's the worst person to do this? Who else has pulled this off? Am I as capable as them? Can I work? And that's kind of how you walk yourself through that thing that's intimidating, whether it's walking across a bar to go talk to someone, whether it's getting up and doing public

• 25:07Ryan Holiday?

  speaking, whether it's launching a podcast, like that imposter syndrome stuff is so often based on just objectively unfair comparisons you are making. Or that imposter syndrome garbage is like so often based on preposterously uncharitable estimations of your own ability. And it's, if you can provide that context, you can go, yeah, I think I can do this. And then I had to get in the car and drive it around the track. Like these Apache helicopters took off beforehand and then, then get in the car. And it's a fast Toyota Supra, but it's just like a regular car. Like you could plug in your phone to Apple CarPlay while you're sitting in there.

• 25:51Ryan Holiday?

  But you know, you hear the start your engines and then, then you just gotta go. And there I am driving around this track. I gotta say there, it's weird. There's the sort of reactions you have, like the subconscious reactions you have. One of which in this case was like, there's a bunch of really fast cars, aggressive drivers behind you, swerving, testing out their tires, gunning their engines. And you sort of subconsciously want to just go, you want, or you want to get out of the way. But no, you actually have to do a kind of a very stoic thing, which is like maintain your equilibrium, maintain your speed. And, and most of all, not crash, humiliate yourself or hurt anyone.

• 26:29Ryan Holiday?

  So I did my first lap around. On the second lap, they go into the pit and you go along outside the pit and you really have to gun it because they've got a shortcut. So you gotta speed up. And then on the third one, you pull in and then turned on my blinker, which was funny. And then you pull off and you're done. And then they're just like, all right, thanks. And then you're just like, whoa, okay. What next? And I turn around and you know who's standing there? Michael Jordan, because Michael Jordan has the first spot in the pit because his, his team is doing incredible. And is off to, they'd won their first two races. They ended up winning this race, which was pretty cool.

• 27:08Ryan Holiday?

  And so I went over and I said, hello, and I thanked him again for writing that forward to the George Raveling book. And told him how much it meant to me and to Coach Rav that he did that. And then, then I went up, saw my family who were up in the booth. My kids had helped themselves to a very big plate of food from the buffet and certainly my kids were surprised I was able to do it. They, they were making fun of me pretty hard. They were like, we thought you were gonna crash. And I was like, thanks bud. And they were like, that would have been so cool. You should have crashed. So, you know, I'm sorry to disappoint them. We had an amazing time. It was lovely. It was actually a great reminder, like in life, you're trying to do your thing. And then there's pressure on you and to know what you're supposed to be doing.

• 27:52Ryan Holiday?

  And to be able to kind of tune out that other stuff, like in running, you learn this, like you're running at the pace that you set and you can't. Because you don't know why other people are doing what they're doing and you're only maybe seeing them out of the back of your eye or when you look over your shoulder and once in a while, you have to get really good at tuning that out. I actually think that's like a life skill. Like, no, no, no, I know the speed I'm supposed to be going, whether that's legal or the mission you're on or the thing you're trying to do or the place you're trying to go. And you can't let other people rush you, distract you, make you feel self-conscious because that's gonna, that's really gonna screw you up. And then you also have to keep a governor on that impulse to want to, to want to like

• 28:33Ryan Holiday?

  slowly pick up the pace to compete, to go, you know, stride for stride with someone or, you know, to sort of keep your position. You don't want to do that. It gets you into trouble. Mike's had a tough year. He was, I won't share his stuff, but he's had a tough year and then kind of a triumphant year. It was really awesome to see him a year later because we saw him at the race last year where he was. I was asking like, could you have imagined at this point last year that you would be here this year? And he said, no. And I think that's a good reminder. Sometimes as we're going through hard stuff, we can only imagine it getting worse. Like, we can't imagine it going well. We can't imagine succeeding. I don't think stoicism is just about predicting that worst case

• 29:17Ryan Holiday?

  scenario. I think you predict the worst case scenario so you can toughen yourself up, you can be prepared for it, you can not be surprised by it. But also making room to acknowledge and appreciate that sometimes fortune surprises you in a good way. That there's also outcomes or directions that this could go that's much better than you expect. Like, if you do what you're supposed to do and, and the things line up the way that they can, like, things could be awesome. And it was wonderful to see that. I'm very happy for him. I know Samantha is too. He was a wonderful host and was cool to, to kick things around with him in the booth after. Thanks to Mike Birch for inviting me. Thanks to the folks at Speedway Motorsports who are amazingly generous and helpful. Thanks

• 29:59Ryan Holiday?

  to Chip, who was my sort of handler during the day. He drove me around in a golf cart. He took me to see Brad Kacilowski. I got to meet Papa Wallace, who'd also read the books and I know I was in good hands with him. He also drove us to our car and stuff. That was lovely. It was really cool. I had not been into NASCAR previous until I went to my first race and it's just a crazy sport. Great conversation with Brad about, you know, about like sort of elite performance. It was really cool. The craziest thing about getting to spend some time with Brad is that he had broke his leg. This is the New York Times article. It said Brad Keselowski broke his leg 10 weeks ago. And then he delivered one of NASCAR's gutsiest races.

• 30:43Ryan Holiday?

  This is what they wrote about after the race. So I didn't know all of this at the time. But the article by Jeff Gluck in the Athletic was incredible. It says, "The 42-year-old broke his femur, leaving him immobile in what he described as by far the worst pain of his life. It was so agonizing that as Keselowski was lying on the freezing ground, he'd fallen out of his car taking his daughter skiing." He told me that. He said, "He thought of the Civil War soldiers who had their legs cut off after a severe injury." He said, "I get why they would bring out the hacksaw." He said, "There was a part of me that's like, that might actually feel better." And what the article goes on to say is that like in an ordinary race, because he'd raced last week or the week before.

• 31:24Ryan Holiday?

  This one in Austin is actually even harder to do coming off 10 weeks after breaking your femur. Because it's not just going around in a circle. As I would soon find out, driving the pace car, it was a very curvy track where you are constantly switching between the brake and the gas. He says, "It's one thing to drive on a superspeedway, which is mostly about keeping the gas pedal on the floor. A 17-turn road course, though, requires the frequent use of three pedals: gas, brake, and clutch." I didn't have to use the clutch. "In addition to G-forces throwing the driver from side to side and slamming the car over all sorts of bumps that jostle the body." Okay, but what was the discomfort actually like? How badly did his leg actually hurt?

• 32:07Ryan Holiday?

  Keselowski said he couldn't define it because he blocked it out. "You just turn it off," he said. "And you just try to get in the zone and turn all that stuff off. I'm sure it will catch up with me tonight." Keselowski's favorite author is Ryan Holiday. That's pretty cool. Whose bestselling books on Stoicism are popular in circles of high achievers, sports included, Holiday, an Austin-area local, attended the race Sunday and met with Keselowski beforehand. The driver ditched his cane for their photo together. It's true, he did. While we were talking, someone brought him his cane because he was struggling a little bit. And then the other crazy thing was when they did the introductions, like, I went out on stage first, I said, and then I had to go down these stairs. Brad came out to the crowd, waved, but did not go down the stairs like the other drivers. So he does know some limits.

• 32:50Ryan Holiday?

  But it was fascinating to go like, this guy can't go down a flight of stairs. And then he's about to race in this thing to do what we're just talking about. And then it says, "One of Holiday's most prominent books, The Obstacle is the Way, reminds readers that they control their emotions and their responses to any situation, no matter how dire. Obstacles like the one Keselowski has faced with his leg injury are an opportunity for self-growth, rather than a roadblock to success." So when we asked Keselowski after climbing from his car, whether he was proud of what he accomplished, his answer was fitting for a student of Stoicism. "I expect it," he said. "I expect to lay it all out on the line. If I'm going to ask

• 33:32Ryan Holiday?

  everybody else to give it their all, I've got to give it my all, too." Just absolutely insane. The other crazy thing, if you look at the picture from this New York Times piece, he puts that like, black, the reflective, like, ink or whatever under his eye, like a football player does. And you should just see, it looks like he's been weeping, like, from the sweat and the wind and the heat of the car, it's like, melted off. It says, "Keselowski wears eye black under his helmet each week, and he sweated enough on Sunday that it was streaming down his face. And yet, after climbing from his car, Keselowski wiped it away with a towel, put on sunglasses, and took a casual sip from

• 34:12Ryan Holiday?

  a red sports drink. And aid returned his black cane, which carries sponsor logo in true NASCAR fashion." Just absolutely incredible. And yeah, just unreal to get to see him do what he does. And then I went home and I crashed because I was exhausted. And now I'm recording this before I get on an airplane to fly and do some more talk. So it has been quite a bit of a grind, but it's all in a day's work. And I just thought I'd share that. And I will talk to you all very soon.

• 34:47Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.