How To Get Out Of A Slump | The Long Way Around

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marx, Rilius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  How to Get Out of a Slump.

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  The path to wisdom is not always a straight one. The journey is long and circuitous. It's a windy road with twists and turns, ups and downs, and highs and lows. And maybe you're in the middle of one of those lows yourself right now at the bottom of a valley. And this can be a scary place to be, because without the proper perspective, it can feel like you're going to be stuck there forever. You take a few steps in one direction, and it feels like you haven't gotten anywhere. The top of the mountain is just as far away, but more distant. And there is a term for this phenomenon. It's called being stuck in a slump. It pops up most often in the context of trying to achieve big, important things. No matter what you do, when you're in a slump, your goal always seems to remain out of reach.

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  You try new things, you try the same things, you try to do them faster, or bigger, or more often, and still you feel rooted in the bottom of that valley. And the whole ordeal becomes utterly exhausting. So how do you get out of this spot? How do you break free from a slump and make progress? Well, take reading, which we talk a lot about here, as an example. Maybe you're not reading enough. Maybe you're not sure why. Maybe you're not getting much enjoyment from what you have been reading. Maybe the insights have become few and far between. What should you do? Instead of trying something new or doing more of the same, here's an idea from the Stoics. Go return to something that has really spoken to you in the past. Everything we know about the Stoics, from Chrysippus to Marcus Aurelius, has them passing around some version of this reminder.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  The idea of meditating on a number of master thinkers. The idea of reading and rereading, of not being satisfied of just getting the gist of something, of returning to the rhythm, as Marcus said. Instead of expecting the next random book you pick up to really speak to you, go back to something that's already spoken volumes. Find out how much more it has to say. Grab a new translation of Marcus Aurelius and see him from a different view. Go read some of the letters from Seneca not included in the Penguin Classics translation. Go give A Man in Full or The Moviegoer or Memoirs of Hadrian another go. And of course, these examples are specific to reading, but you can generalize them out to any other kind of goal you're trying to achieve.

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  Working out, being more productive, connecting with your partner or your kids, eating better. It doesn't matter. Go back to the things that worked for you in the past and reengage with them. Think of it as a switchback on the path to wisdom. It might not feel like you're going forward, but you're going up, up, up, out of that valley towards new heights. And this rereading thing has been one I've been on a kick on lately, especially when I'm stuck, like I'm in the middle of writing a book, or I just feel like a bit of a funk or a little depressed. I just go back and reread a book I've loved. I reread Gatsby and I reread The Moviegoer recently. I just reread stuff and I just find, oh yeah, this is why that book was so influential and important to me when I read it.

• 3:42Ryan Holiday?

  Because it's great, because it's classic. And it reminds us of that idea from Marcus Aurelius that we can't step in the same river twice. Anyways, we talk about stuff like this a lot in the Daily Stoic Reading Challenge, which I'd love to have you be a part of. It's been one of our most popular challenges over the years. I got a lot out of making it. I know you'll get a lot out of taking it. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/reading. All the best Stoic wisdom applied to the writing or to the reading process to building a reading practice. And if you're more on the habit formation side, maybe you're just stuck with some bad habits, check out the Daily Stoic Habits Challenge, which you can find at dailystoic.com/habits, which is like six weeks of better habit formation, which we've also heard a lot of rave reviews on. And of course, remember, if you sign up

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  for Daily Stoic Life, you get those two courses and all our other ones totally for free.

• 4:37Ryan Holiday?

  The Long Way Around.

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly, my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. Spend more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestsellers. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading.

• 5:19Ryan Holiday?

  "You could enjoy this very moment, all the things you are praying to reach by taking the long way around, if you'd stop depriving yourself of them." Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, 12:1. "Ask most people what they're working towards, and you'll get an answer. I'm trying to become insert professional, or they'll tell you they're trying to get appointed to some impressive committee or position, to become a millionaire, to get discovered, to become famous, whatever. You ask them a couple more questions, such as, why are you doing that? Or what are you hoping it'll be like when you get it?" And you'll find that at the very core of it, people want freedom. They want happiness. They want the respect of their peers. A Stoic looks at this and shakes their head at the immense effort and

• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

  expense we put into chasing things that are simple and straightforward to acquire. It's as if we'd prefer to spend years building a complicated Rube Goldberg machine, instead of just reaching out and picking up what we want. It's like looking all over for your Sunglasses and realizing they were on your head the whole time. Freedom, that's easy. It's in your choices, the Stoics would say. Happiness, that's easy. It's in your choices, the Stoics would say. Respect your peers. That too is in the choices you make. All of that is in front of you. No need to take the long way to get there. It's actually like a viral email chain. You've probably seen it before about the fishermen in Thailand or something.

• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

  And the Western businessman sees him and he says, oh, you've got this little boat. What if you got another boat and another boat, you scaled this operation? You could make all this money. And the guy says, well, then what? And he's like, well, then you could retire and live on a beach somewhere. The guy says, but that's what I do now. And actually, this story dates back to like the 14th century. It's about a king who's advised by his advisor to, you know, conquer this territory, this territory, this territory, this territory. Why, why, why? Well, at the end of it, you can live in peace, although he lives in peace now. I've experienced my, my own version of this as an author. It's been funny. I meet these really successful people who do the things that I sometimes wish I could do.

• 7:25Ryan Holiday?

  They play, they play professional sports. They have huge audiences. They've made all this money. They have all this stuff. And you know, you catch yourself being a little jealous and they invite you over to their fancy houses. Sit there and you go, man, what it'd be so cool to live this life. And then I find out the real reason they invited me over is that they want to learn how to write books. Right? Like I'm jealous of their life. They're jealous of my life. Right? And it's, I think this is what Marcus is saying is that you can have what you want right now. And more importantly, the thing that you think will bring you something, peace, contentment, happiness, whatever. It's not gonna happen. It's this horizon that you never quite meet. It's always a little bit out of view.

• 8:10Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus is saying that we try to get our stuff the long way, the hard way. At the end of, you know, this long war, the end of this long journey. Right? It's after I become rich and successful. After I make it, after I win a Super Bowl, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Then I'll feel good. Then I'll be able to spend time with my family. Then I can be at peace, whatever. And you can have that right now. I have this chapter in Stillness is the Key about enough. Actually, it's funny, my wife just did this triathlon in Austin. And as I was walking our kids back to the car after watching, this lady stopped me and she said, oh, I saw this viral video you did about that story of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. And she said, could you tell that again? And she made me tell it in front of her.

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  But it's one of my favorite stories. Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, they're at this party, this rich person. Again, just like I was just telling you that I've experienced myself. And Kurt Vonnegut is sort of teasing Joseph Heller. And he says, you know, this guy made more money than your books will ever make in your life. And Joseph Heller says, yeah, but I have something that he doesn't have. And Vonnegut says, what could that possibly be? And Joseph Heller says, I have enough. I have what I need. And that's what Marcus is saying too. You could have it right now. It's already yours. It's already there in the things that you control. Having the other stuff is nice and you can still get it, right? I feel like I have enough. I feel like there's nothing I'm really trying to prove, but I'm still doing interesting things. I've got this new cool project I'm working on.

• 9:40Ryan Holiday?

  I'm about to start another book. I'm trying to do it from a place of enoughness and fullness, not a place of emptiness, right? Not a place of having to prove myself of getting more and more and more, of doing it because I actually enjoy it. And knowing that if I don't finish, if I don't make it all the way there, if just the time that I spent working on it today was all I got, that was enough. That itself was enjoyable. And to me, that's just a much healthier place to live and be and operate from. And I hope you can give yourself that gift. Give yourself the gift of enough because you are enough.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the stoia, the stoia po kilé, the painted porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the stoia. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic meditations over the weekend just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts, and this is the best part, all

• 11:07Ryan Holiday?

  our Daily Stoic courses and challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at DailyStoicLife.com.