You’ve Just Got To Keep Going Back | Ask DS

It’s impossible not to read Marcus Aurelius or Seneca and sense that they were always working. Not that they were literally always at the office–as we said, they believed in a kind of work life balance–but on themselves. They were studying. They were reflecting. They were asking questions. Late at night after his wife went to sleep, Seneca would pull out his journals and evaluate the day, going over what he’d done well, where he didn’t live up to his standards. Marcus, most famously, was seen as an old man, picking up his tablets and heading off to attend a lecture by Sextus, a wise teacher.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan speaks with members of the Minnesota Twins organization about how Stoicism can be applied to make their business better. The lessons that Ryan covers include how her re-centers when he finds himself straying from his Stoic path, the "ah-ha" moment that got him hooked on the teachings of Stoicism, and why Stoicism is a philosophy for all of life.✉️ 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. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:45Ryan Holiday?

  "You've just got to keep going back." It would be wonderful if the world was naturally just, if people were automatically good, always doing the right thing. But of course, they don't. It's one of the most heartbreaking and frustrating things about life. Not only do people often not do the right thing, they will continue in error or evil even after they've been challenged, even after you've made every argument or followed all the procedures. Nothing illustrates this more than the fight to end segregation in America, which was more than just marches. It was a series of endless court cases, cases that took years to get picked up, years to get their day in court, years to get the right verdict. And ones passed were then often ignored by Southern politicians and law enforcement officers. But the reason the cause eventually prevailed

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  was encapsulated by the legal philosophy of John Doerr, who served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights during the 1960s. "You've just got to keep going back," he would explain. The Southern strategy was one of holding out, of being so difficult, being so painful to deal with, the hope being that the North would do what they'd done during Reconstruction. They'd eventually be disheartened, and they would give up and leave. In the case of John Meredith, the black man who integrated the University of Mississippi, Doerr filed hundreds of motions, sat before multiple judges, appealed and appealed and appealed. He never lost heart. He never gave up. And neither did Meredith. It should be said, even after he was shot in the head. "You've just got to keep going back," he said.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  Justice, the most essential of the Stoic virtues is not just about being right. It's not just having the moral high ground. You have to fight for it. You have to seize and command that high ground. Cato knew this. He was dogged in his determination to keep Rome a republic. And he wore himself down fighting over every example of corruption, every attempt to bend the rules, every effort by Caesar to take over. Cato didn't succeed, but his example inspired the founding fathers many centuries later, just as the words of those founders were taken up by people like John Doerr and Martin Luther King Jr. and Diane Nash and made real. Things weren't perfect. There was incredible resistance. It took longer than it should have, but it wouldn't have happened at all had they not

• 2:57Ryan Holiday?

  kept going back, had they not made it happen.

• 3:10Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the podcast. Back a couple of months ago, I gave a talk in Minneapolis to the Minnesota Twins. Well, not the players or the team exactly. It was put on by the Minnesota Twins for a bunch of advertisers and brand partners. So we sort of talked some sports stuff and we talked Stoicism, how we sort of apply these lessons of the Stoics to whatever we happen to be doing. And as usual, I do the Q and A after. It was a short Q and A. They told me afterwards, everyone was a little shy and didn't want to ask too many questions, but I kept my mic on after and a bunch of folks came up to me. So here is my Q and A there onstage and offstage. I hope these questions are valuable to you.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  And I bleep out all the names where I try to, just because I don't know if anyone wants to necessarily be included, but I'll take you on that ride with me in today's episode.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I want to blow off one first question. So my assumption is that you've probably read the book. It's a good one. This is a really good book.

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And I'm sorry, I got to think though, there's still moments and days where all the things that you talk about here, you cover the book, where it doesn't go perfectly. Is there a way that you find a center yourself again?

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  To kind of get back to those same moments?

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I wanted to put that there in the conclusion for a reason. Marcus is saying, look, you fall off the path, you get back on the path, right? You make mistakes, you relapse, you get distracted, you have some bad habits. How do you come back to what you know is important, what you know gets the best out of yourself, right? How do you send to yourself? Athletes know this, right? It doesn't matter how you did on the last at-bat, the bat before that, the last 20 at-bats. You've got this fresh opportunity in front of you. And the quicker you can clear your mind and just be in the moment that you're in and try to apply what you know, what's served you well, what you have trained for, what you've done more than anyone else on the planet, that's what allows you to do that thing.

• 5:12Ryan Holiday?

  There's an expression in writing that your last book won't write your next one, right? So I try to remind myself, hey, staring at a blank page and starting over, that's good and scary at the same time. And then I also try to think about that. Yeah, if I've had a couple of bad weeks, I've been eating poorly, I've been sleeping poorly, I'm not doing or being the person that I know that I want to be, right? That's not ideal, but I have the opportunity in this moment right now to make different choices to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. And so, you know, we watch batters, they have their routine. It's sort of, a part of that, I think, is really about wiping the slate clean, starting fresh, getting in the right headspace.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  And I think cultivating that in your personal and professional life is a great thing we can take from sports, for sure.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  The words of Ted Lasso, saying, "Beelkfish." Any other questions? Right back here.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Hi, thank you so much for being here today.

• 6:13Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  It's interesting because I've read your book in the past, and I actually got a fortune of time, you know, a few years ago.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, amazing.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  And then one career moment, and starting another one. So, thank you for that. What was your aha moment that really kicked you into pursuing the path of socialism and the work that you're doing today?

• 6:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I fell in love with philosophy when I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. I'm reading this book, it's 2,000 years old, and you're like... There's a passage in Book 5 of Meditations where Marcus talks about struggling to get out of bed in the morning. He says, "At dawn, when you awake, we have trouble getting out of bed." And I'm reading that as a college student. I'm like, "What?" 2,000 years ago, this person, whose life should be incomprehensible to me, is going through the exact same thing. I don't want to go to this 7:00 AM class. But he says, he says something like, "Is this what you are put here to do? To huddle under the blankets and be warm?" Right? He says, "Go and do what you're put here to do." He says, "People who love what they do

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  wear themselves down doing it." So, that was just one passage of many, "The obstacle is the way," being another. You're just, you're reading this stuff and you go, "Wait, I thought this was a long time ago. I thought everything was different." And you find out it wasn't. It's exactly the same. That more things have stayed the same than have changed about human beings. And, you know, it just, it helped me so much that it got me really excited about creating that same sort of aha moment in other people. So, that's sort of what, what really keeps me going. But I remember when I had my marketing business, my employee came to me with this thing, you know, they'd screwed something up. And I was, my first reaction, I was like, "Should I get frustrated? Should I yell at this person?

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  Should I let this person go?" And then, I thought, "You know what? This is actually an opportunity. I'm going to teach this person how they shouldn't do stuff like that before. And then, we're going to fix a set of processes. We're going to fix all the things that led up to that being possible here. And then, we're going to be better for having them, for them having made this mistake." Right? And then, I was like, "Wait, that's what's in the book." Right? So, realizing again, that that's what, that's the sort of insight or process that leaders have been going through for as long as there has been philosophy and as long as there's been leaders. That's sort of what gets me going and what, what I try to do. So, great question.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Anybody else?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Yes, thank you so much for being here.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  It was a pleasure.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I read the obstacles away shortly after it came out.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  Really? Okay.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  I'm excited to revisit it. I was taking curious notes.

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  That's awesome.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  And then I have your new book for my brother because he's a new dad.

• 9:02Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, The Daily Dad? That's awesome.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm so excited to get him into it.

• 9:06Ryan Holiday?

  Very cool. Yeah, like, there's something about like just starting with like just one thing to look at every day.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  I also just appreciate how all the lessons you incorporate your family because it's like, it's not just work.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. Well, and also it's like you're crushing it at work, but you like suck at home. Are you really crushing it? And then conversely, I feel like when I'm doing the stuff well at home, it carries, you know what, like,

• 9:36Ryan Holiday?

  you get your house in order, you can do better at the other stuff. The other way around is not true. You can be, you see this in sports too, you're great at what you do, but you suck everywhere.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Exactly. You know the author of God?

• 9:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  So he asked the question, not how is your work, how is it working for the people in your life?

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, that's, yeah, sure. Because it's very easy. You make it all about you. It's like sort of centered around the wrong things. And then like, is that really success?

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 10:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's great. I didn't know about that. That's a good test.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Yes, it is.

• 10:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Well, I can, I can tell, like,

• 10:16Ryan Holiday?

  when I'm not working on a book or I am working on a book, things are different at home because like just that, you know.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  The energy and, yeah.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, yes. So you realize that what you're carrying around, you're not actually carrying around. You're radiating it out and people are picking up on it.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  It's funny because I thought to myself, I always want to do this. Oh. A meeting, a mentoring session because otherwise it's like, I don't know what my energy is. I don't, I don't think about it. What am I just putting off?

• 10:45Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. Yeah. It's weird. Energy is obviously like woo woo nonsense, but it's also not.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  Like. You're in a shitty mood, your dog's not behaving as a result. You're in a shitty mood, your kids...

• 10:55Speaker 03

  What you were saying about manifesting.

• 10:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:58Ryan Holiday?

  It's nonsense, but it's also somehow true at the same time.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  I just like to try to set myself on the path, right?

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  Totally, yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  So.

• 11:05Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, and then, yeah, how do you get in the right headspace to then do what you need to do?

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Thank you for what you...

• 11:11Ryan Holiday?

  Well, yeah, thanks.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Such a pleasure to meet you.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  Appreciate it, yeah, thanks.