Daily Stoic Sundays: How to Feel Like You Have Enough

In today’s episode, Ryan discusses how to feel satisfied with what life has brought you—whatever that may be—using the wisdom of the Stoics. This episode is brought to you by the Theragun. The new Gen 4 Theragun is perfect for easing muscle aches and tightness, helping you recover from physical exertion, long periods of sitting down, and more—and its new motor makes it as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Try the Theragun risk-free for 30 days, starting at just $199. ***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time, and we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Don't tell yourself you will be happy when you do X or when you get Y. That is like the most insidious lie in the world. I'm sure you can tell your audience, like, it's like, you've accomplished things that you would have absolutely killed for like 15 or 20, or even a couple of years ago, right? How did it actually feel to get it? Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. Doesn't feel like anything? It feels the same. Yes. Because the only way I know to describe it is you don't like walk through life with changing states. Yes. You sort of stay in this bubble and life moves. Does that make any sense? So the goal is to strengthen my bubble? Yeah. And that will project me farther into life?

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  Because you don't, if you're always feeling like someone has something better than you. I bought a Lamborghini when I was 26 for my birthday. Yeah. What did that cost you? Shit, I don't even remember, $200,000. Okay. Right? And...

• 1:52Speaker 01

  I always felt like, gosh, look at all these guys with their cars. Look at all blah blah. I'm gonna get that when I get enough money. The week after, I was looking at the person who had the nicer Lamborghini.

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  And two years later, I bought a Rolls Royce. I was looking at the guy who had the newer Rolls Royce. Like, it just, you always live in that state of trying to get somewhere.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yep.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  If that's what's pushing you to get there.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  And you were anxious about having the Lamborghini. It's not, it's not as fun as you, it's also disappointing.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Did we talk about that?

• 2:17Ryan Holiday?

  No, no.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it sucks.

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  But, but I think it's funny, it's also just like, how did it feel to get a beard?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  And it's like, well, you didn't get a beard. You grew a beard slowly over time. So there was never a day where you were like, no beard? Beard.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29Ryan Holiday?

  Right? It's a process.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  I would have been hyped.

• 2:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  When I was 16, you popped this beard on my face, I'd be like, what?

• 2:34Ryan Holiday?

  As, as someone who, who cannot grow a beard, I, I would, but, but-

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Envious is what you're saying.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. No, that, but, but you'd go like, oh, okay, it's, it's a process. So you never get there. And so the point is not like, oh, so you never feel good? So it's not worth having a Lamborghini? Or it's not worth being successful? No, that's not the point. It's that, can you do it for a better reason? Like, can you do it running on cleaner fuel? Like, can you go like, I really like cars. I have $200,000, I'm not gonna spend it on anything else. I'm gonna buy a Lamborghini. Right? That's different than, I won't feel like the loser kid-

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:09Ryan Holiday?

  -from school if I have the Lamborghini. Or like, my dad will be proud of me if I win a gold medal.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  No. If your dad is not already proud of you, no amount of accomplishments is going to get that for you.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  If you don't feel comfortable about, around women, let's say, you're not gonna feel comfortable around women, ever, unless you work internally on yourself.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32Ryan Holiday?

  It's no, being a billionaire is not gonna solve that problem. It might make you sort of creepily able to pretend you don't have that problem. You know?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:41Ryan Holiday?

  But it won't, being famous is not going to fill the hole in your soul. Only working on your soul will fill that problem. You cannot solve internal problems with external accomplishments.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  You can still have external accomplishments, and I hope that you do. But that distinction is very important because people end up, people blow their brains out because they go, oh, this is all there is? And it's like, no. This is what happens when you try to solve a problem with a solution that has nothing to do with the problem.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  The sort of Zen metaphor is that like on the surface, the ocean looks calm, but beneath there's currents. You know, there's riptides. This is kind of what they saw as like craving and desire is like that it threatens to disturb the stillness that you have. So I think Tiger Woods is a fascinating example of someone who like mentally on the golf course and physically on the golf course, complete mastery, but spiritually clearly was, you know, wrestling with some very dark demons, right? Like, and, and I mean, I think one of the saddest things I found out in my research is that his dad referred to the idea of enough as the E word. Like, there was never enough.

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  And that's such a, that's such a horrible lesson to teach a kid. It's not that winning isn't, isn't great and that you shouldn't strive to be the best that you can be, but the idea that you can never be satisfied, that you'll never feel good, that only weaklings ever, ever feel content is a horrible thing, right? That's horrible. That's like, if you were trying to create a formula for misery, that's literally what you would come up with.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  I tend to think of pushing or doing and being or stillness, it's kind of opposites. And I think what you do in the book really a nice job of is these things are not necessarily opposite and you can have a life where you are pushing, but you're also very still. And I look at you on this, on this tour and we'll get personal about it. You are clearly in pushing mode right now.

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  Literally, yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yes. And I'm curious how you incorporate stillness in that and also in your research in, in writing this book, how you, you came with a definition of stillness that isn't just secluding yourself in the monastery for long periods of time, but stillness that is very much integrated with productivity, doing pushing.

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that, that's the kind of stillness that I'm interested in. I'm interested in not the person who retreats from the world, but someone who manages to find peace inside a very busy world. Marcus really talks about this. He says, you know, like people want to flee to the mountains or to the beach or, you know, to the beautiful ruins, but he says, you can actually find this by looking inside yourself. So again, that's something I missed the first read and probably at 19, you know, made no sense to me, but as you get older and you do more stuff, you realize, oh, wait, that's, you sort of, that's the point of all this.

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  Kennedy is great, right? In the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's all about self-control, discipline. But also, he cheated on his wife during the 13 days. Instead of being home with his family, the world's about to end. He's like, "Let me hook up with a college girl." That's not power. That's slavery. You know what I mean? Like, that guy is not in control of himself. That's what addiction looks like. And eventually, like, we think we can keep those spheres of our life separate. You don't think about, like, how it's gonna feel having sex. You think about that period right after you have it. Yeah. The guilt, you know, the lying that you're gonna have to do to your significant other. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, if you can flash forward, you go, "Okay, I don't need this.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  This is my mind lying to me, saying that this is gonna be amazing." And it won't be.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Sometimes you think you have to experience that to know that?

• 7:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course, of course. And that, like, sometimes you gotta get that award, or make that money, or do that accomplishment, and go, "Oh, it's not what I thought." And then that gives you some ability to be a little bit more cynical, in a good way, about that stuff in the future. What I found so interesting about that chapter, though, like JFK, that desire was passed down to him from his father. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta work, like, yeah, he had a father who cheated on his wife. He had a father who told him, you know, like, nurse grudges. He had a father who told him, like, "You can get away with whatever you want." And so, we can pick up bad habits from our childhood, and you gotta do that work.

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Because what happens is, is you get from your dad, or whatever, that, like, you know, "You're only powerful, you're only a man if you do X, Y, and Z." Absolutely. And that's not true. And so, you gotta be constantly checking those assumptions. Because they come from a different time, a different era. If you like the podcast that we do here, and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.