Don’t Disgrace Yourself | Ask Daily Stoic

Francis Bacon was a brilliant philosopher whose breakthroughs reverberate through our world today. He was also a human being and a politician. Less glorious than his intellectual achievements were his travails in the public sphere, which ultimately ended in his conviction for accepting bribes. No one was more disappointed in this than Bacon, who lamented at the end of his life that he had wasted himself, “in things for which I was least fit, so as I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage.”---In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions from the audience as part of his Stoicism 101 course. This is the first of a four part series, and it covers focusing on your own choices as opposed to other peoples', why trying to anticipate everything that could happen is a fool's errand, how to study Stoicism without a sense of superiority, and more.🎧 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ 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, including the Premium Leather Edition of the Daily Stoic Journal.📱 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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.

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  Don't disgrace yourself.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Francis Bacon was a brilliant philosopher whose breakthroughs reverberate through our world today. He was also a human being and a politician. Less glorious than his intellectual achievements were his travails in the public sphere, which ultimately ended in his conviction for accepting bribes. No one was more disappointed in this than Bacon, who lamented at the end of his life that he had wasted himself, in quote, "for things for which I was least fit. So as I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage." It's an arc that should sound familiar to any student of the Stoics, because it is,

• 1:35Ryan Holiday?

  in many ways, also the arc of the great Seneca. Yes, Seneca was a wise and brilliant philosopher, but as James Rom points out in his riveting biography, Dying Every Day, Seneca was also Nero's principal advisor. In the chaotic court of Nero, Seneca was a stabilizing influence, but he did little to stop Nero's crimes. We don't know of any direct bribes, but he did grow quite rich. And just by association with such a murderer, he estranged himself from the ideals of Stoicism and his own soul.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  In the end, like Bacon, Seneca died a largely broken man. Yes, Seneca's actual death was heroic and brave, but the road leading up to it had been shameful. Seneca had compromised and compromised himself. He had rationalized, he had been silent and complicit. He had disgraced himself. The lesson here is not that the Stoics should turn away from the world, that Bacon and Seneca should have simply stuck to their writings. It's that we have to strive to be like Cato in what we do. We have to strive to be like Marcus Aurelius. We have to have a code, we have to draw clear lines. We have to correct ourselves when we step over these lines before it is too late. Seneca himself had written that we must make ourselves a slave to philosophy.

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  The problem was that he had been a slave less to philosophy and more to ambition and ego, which like it had for Francis Bacon and countless leaders before and since, never leads to a good place.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Wanted to talk about

• 3:19Speaker 01

  some other examples of when

• 3:24Speaker 01

  you should be focused on your own learning rather than someone else's.

• 3:29Ryan Holiday?

  Like, like, what do you mean? Focused on your own learning rather than someone else's?

• 3:33Speaker 01

  If I

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Worrying about your, what you control, yourself as opposed to other people's behaviors.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I misread one of the things.

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  No.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. The thing that we had talked about was, you know, he has a little brother who's four. I think you've got a son around that age.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  I do, yes.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  That's a challenging age when you're a 10-year-old and you've got a four-year-old little brother. And what we talked about is you can't worry about what the four-year-old's doing, right? You got to worry about your own reactions and what you control, right?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, so I go through this with my four-year-old and his two-year-old brother, just as your dad probably goes through this with people at work. It's very easy to focus on what other people are doing. And I think, in a way, we almost focus on that because it exempts us from having to focus on our own stuff. I remember, I was actually just writing about this, but several years ago, I said something to my wife. We were arguing, and I said, "You're being very frustrating." And she said, "I can't frustrate you," which, of course, is a very frustrating thing to say, but true, right?

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics believe that we're responsible for our own emotions, our own reactions, and what other people do and say is sort of up to them. And I think another place where this ties into Stoicism, that's maybe a good rule to think about. Perhaps sometimes your brother's getting away with something that you wouldn't be able to get away with. Like, I have to talk to my sons about this, where, you know, one of them is not sharing, but the other is having to share, and that feels very unfair, right? But the truth is, we're all at different places, and we're all sort of subject to our own rules. And this would be true for Marcus Aurelius. So imagine Marcus. He's the emperor of Rome. Theoretically, he can do whatever he wants.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  He's all-powerful. And yet, he has these strict rules that he insists that he follow because he thinks that's the right thing to do. You probably imagine that he looked out and he saw other rich, successful people who got to just do whatever they wanted while he was working late into the night. They were at their country estates or having parties, right? And so, his rule was like, "I'm going to be strict with myself and tolerant with other people," which is like, you give everyone else as much leeway as possible, you assume they're struggling with something, that they don't understand, that they're doing the best they can, and then you, which you control, that's who you hold to the highest standard possible. Does that make sense?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so is it sort of like you'll never go anywhere if you're not trying? And you're just focused on how somebody else is doing?

• 6:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, so there's a Winston Churchill quote, and he says, "You'll never get anywhere if you stop to throw rocks at every dog that barks." Now, first off, you shouldn't throw rocks at dogs. But the expression is true, right? It's like if you're walking home and you stop at every time there's a problem, every time, you know, someone says something, every, you know, every time a dog barks at you, you'll never get there because you're never making any progress. So it's like if you're monitoring what other people are doing and you're pointing out that they're getting away with something or that it's not fair, what you're neglecting is your own stuff, which you could be making progress on right now.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you so much.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  No, this is great. Please keep doing this. I wish that I'd been introduced to this stuff as early as you have. So I'm very impressed.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Thank you very much.

• 7:18Ryan Holiday?

  All right, let's do David.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Oh, hey, Ryan. Very cool to be able to talk to you. Thank you.

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  I had a question. So premeditatio malorum. I think I get that and I see the benefit of it. The problem is I also kind of like I'm totally bought into the concept of a black swan, too. I see Anna Frenzel right over your shoulder there.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  Black swans right here, so yes.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  And they seem kind of like they're in conflict to me. Am I missing a nuance there? Or is one like macro and the other micro or?

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's a good question. I think when we're trying to anticipate everything that happens, it would be arrogance to believe that we could, in fact, do that, right? That you're capable of knowing all the unknowns, right? That's obviously impossible. So I think even an understanding that black swans exist and they could appear at any moment is itself a kind of premeditatio malorum that the vast majority of people are not doing. And in fact, the whole parable about the black swan is everyone assumed that because the only swans they had seen were white.

• 8:37Ryan Holiday?

  All swans were white. There was not the awareness that perhaps in a foreign distant land, there were swans that were a different color. And so the, it's only when I believe Australia has discovered that the first black swan, you know, is known to exist. But in truth, the black swan was always there. Right? And so I think part of premeditatio malorum, it's not like, hey, I, because I'm a genius and I can predict the future, I'm aware of all the possibilities, going to be one of these three options. I think it's going to be one of these three options, or a fourth, completely unpredictable, unknowable option. And, you know, here's how I'm prepared to be flexible. You know, I think Taleb talks

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  about this a lot, you know, even the barbell strategy is essentially, you know, you don't know what's going to happen, but you want to be prepared that if there is some extreme unlikely event, you're not, you have some exposure to the upside of that potential event as well. Right. Okay. Great question, though. Let's do the other, David.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Well, thank you. So my question has to do with, I guess, like, through, throughout reading meditations, Marcus talks about how we should be, how we should be helpful to other, other people, you know, human nature, like, we're all on the same team. However, I find it kind of hard to like, not develop some, some sense of superiority while doing this type of learning and studying, especially when you get back to this with how he's talking down to like, on these rants to other people. So I, I wonder what, what, what your thoughts are on still, you know, not having that sense of superiority and still wanting to help other people, but still being ruthless about who you surround yourself with.

• 10:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. And I think that's where we get this idea of tolerant with others, strict with yourself, which is, I control me, I know what's up to me, and that's who I'm going to hold to a high standard, but other people I'm going to be, I'm going to be chill with. So I think this idea of like, oh, because I've learned about this stuff, I'm better than other people. To me, that means you're not doing that sort of good-heartedness, or tolerance, or compassion for other people and what they're going for.

• 11:02Ryan Holiday?

  And look, I think really the sign of progress or wisdom should be some intellectual humility, right? Socrates is considered wise, not because he's so much smarter than everyone in Athens, and he's aware of it, but his intelligence comes from his humility, his willingness to ask questions, to poke holes in his own beliefs. So as you do study, as you do get better, sure, part of that should be a higher set of standards, confidence in yourself, perhaps a little bit of a distinction between you and other people. At the same time, you should be sort of ruthlessly skeptical, ruthlessly scrutinizing yourself,

• 11:44Ryan Holiday?

  and focusing on all the things you know that you need to do better, that you're not as good at as you could be. And this is, I think, where you check that ego from creeping in. Does that make sense?

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

• 12:01Ryan Holiday?

  Who should we do next? Let's do Todd.

• 12:05Speaker 05

  Hello, Ron.

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  Hi.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  First of all, I read that Seneca book on anger.

• 12:11Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  It was a total game changer, because I'm an actor. So I was like, I don't get angry. You know, once you start to, you know, just be open and start with the beginner's mind and start to like, learn the characteristics of what anger is. I was like, whoa. But that was my action step. But my question for today is, I actually mentioned this to Billy. He answered my question in the chat. I was like, when you're accepting this new information, do you, when you learn a new school of thought, these revelations that you get from what you're reading, does that become your new belief without like, because I heard you, I heard you mention in one of your podcasts, you're like, I wish when I was younger, I would have thought about what I

• 12:55Speaker 05

  said instead of what I just read.

• 12:58Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. No, to go back to your point about anger, I've got to imagine that as an actor... You have some experience getting inside an angry person and you can see, not that anger is a choice, but you can see that it's sort of like a habit or a character that one inhabits. I'm fascinated in sports, like when a coach gets angry on purpose to send a message either to like the team or to the refs. Obviously, a coach who's not in control of themselves is not good. But a coach who can get angry to send a message is good. So I would, I would think that being an actor would be really good practice

• 13:43Ryan Holiday?

  for sort of understanding your emotions and being able to use them when they're of use to you. And say, no, I'm not going to do that when they're not

• 13:55Ryan Holiday?

  to use of you. So, so, so I think that's interesting. But yeah, look, there's even a quote from Epictetus where he says, you know, when you start to make progress, when you, when you, when you learn something, he says, don't put on airs about it. Like, don't go on

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  bragging about all the things that you've learned, all the progress you've made. Don't just regurgitate the things that you just learned. He says that's when you get in trouble. And when I think about, you know, maybe things that I've, when I look back at things that I read, and maybe I, or sorry, that I've written that maybe make me cringe a little bit, what I can feel is maybe some artifice, right? Like I can feel that like I, I didn't really know this. I just heard it and it sounded good. You know what I mean? Or it wasn't, I hadn't really done the work, right? I might have, I might still be correct, but I think back and I go, I was correct, but for the wrong reasons.

• 14:53Ryan Holiday?

  Or I was correct and I was presenting it in the wrong way. And so that's sort of what I think about.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  One that's probably. I have this. You have. Yeah.

• 15:02Ryan Holiday?

  So let's, uh, let's do Mackenzie.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  Hi.

• 15:09Ryan Holiday?

  Hi.

• 15:09Speaker 06

  I was truly not expecting that. I was like, there's so many people with their hands raised. Um, so my question actually has to do with the newsletter from today.

• 15:18Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 15:19Speaker 06

  Of this idea of reading books and kind of, and I love the line you had on the podcast this morning about meeting information, kind of like in the middle of the field that you might not agree with.

• 15:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 06

  And I think one of the biggest challenges I have, and maybe it might just be kind of my own little bubble. But when you're reading those challenging things, removing your ego long enough to say, "All right, I'm gonna read a Jordan Peterson. I'm gonna read a challenging book and not sit here the whole time going, "You idiot."

• 15:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:51Speaker 06

  Instead, like being really, like actually open. Not that line you say, "Ego is the enemy," where you're like, "I'm so humble, but you don't actually mean it."

• 16:01Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, it's, it's true. I mean, I, I think because we have so little time to read and, and we love reading, that generally, we want to spend time reading things that make us feel good or that, that are, are down a rabbit hole or a, a line of thinking that we agree with. The problem is, reading should also be challenging us. And if you're only, it's like, like what I would think, what I try to think back on, and I don't think my own answer is good enough, but it's like, how many books? What was the last book you read that you disagreed with? Right? And I think there's two problems with that. It's not just that we, uh, aren't, um, reading challenging enough stuff.

• 16:42Ryan Holiday?

  It's probably also that we're not digging deep enough in a topic that we're even getting more than one point of view. Right? So it's not like you should just go read the most incendiary, offensive, awful things. But it's just like, hey, like in any school, like, like, look, there's some, uh, you know, classicists who think that, uh, the Stoics are brilliant, and there's some classicists who think that they're, uh, very overrated. Uh, this is a book I read, um, a few year, uh, months ago called, uh, "How to Be an Epicurean", which is, you know, obviously, to write a book on Epicureanism, you're, you're, you're sort of diametrically opposed to the Stoics in some way. I didn't really love this book. Like, uh, there's a bunch I disagreed with it, but that's sort of the point.

• 17:24Ryan Holiday?

  Like, you want to be reading things, at least on a semi-regular basis, that you, that you disagree with. Right? And so I think that's how I want to think about it. So it's not just reading the Jordan Petersons, but it's also just reading deep enough in a topic that you're getting a diverse set of views. Even if, you know, there, even if you're, you know, you're reading in, I don't know, critical race theory, there's obviously disagreements inside critical race theory, just as there's disagreements inside, you know, libertarianism and conservatism and liberalism. You know, where, where are the disagreements? Because that's, I think, where you're forced to examine your own assumptions.

• 18:06Ryan Holiday?

  But as far as the, the more controversial views too, you know, it doesn't have to be a book, but one of the things I learned from Peter Thiel, when I wrote my book about him, he was talking about how often we deal with straw men. So when we argue against someone, we have only the most superficial understanding of what they say or think, because like, we, we've never actually engaged with their point of view in any way. I think that's like when Jordan Peterson gets on these interviews and he, and he sort of ends up making the person look foolish. I think that often happens because they seriously underestimated him. They saw him as this like moronic caricature, instead of a guy who was like a Harvard professor

• 18:51Ryan Holiday?

  for many years and is clearly intelligent and articulate. So like, let's say he's totally wrong about everything. You would be well served to really go understand where he's coming from and what he's saying, so that when you try to argue against it, or when you hold a countervailing view, that you don't end up looking like an idiot, because, you know, all you've read is like five tweets.

• 19:22Ryan 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.