Daily Stoic Sundays: What Marcus Aurelius Can Teach Frontline Responders During COVID-19

This past January, Ryan spoke with the USAF’s 31st Fighter Wing, stationed in Aviano, Italy. Later this area would experience a virulent outbreak of COVID-19. Ryan recently recorded a follow-up call with the Aviano base, which you can hear in today’s episode. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Visit http://foursigmatic.com/stoic to get 15% off your order. This episode is also brought to you by Thrive Market, an online marketplace where you can get over 6000 products, whether it's pantry staples, food, wine, and other groceries, or cleaning products, vitamins, or even bath and body products. They have products for any diet or value system, whether it's vegan, non-GMO, paleo, keto, kosher, halal, non-FODMAP, and more. Visit https://thrivemarket.com/stoic to get 25% off your order today.***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: 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.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  In January, I found myself at a military base in northern Italy. It's a NATO base, but the US Air Force is based there, mostly the 31st Fighter Wing. And I got up on stage. There was something like 2,000 airmen and women, standing next to an F-16 on this cool stage in an airport hangar. And we were just talking about philosophy, how, you know, what the Stoics say, "We don't control what happens, we control how we respond." These Stoic virtues of justice and courage and wisdom and self-discipline. And then I went home, back to my normal life, and they probably thought their normal life was resuming too. And instead, within a matter of days, one of the worst pandemics in history strikes northern Italy specifically.

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  They find themselves in the hotspot of one of the worst global pandemics in memory. And they're right in the middle of it. And so now, all those ideas suddenly become much more pressing and much more urgent. You know, when Marcus Aurelius said, "It stares you in the face. No role is so well-suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now." He's talking about this. He was, he was writing that in Italy, 2,000 years ago, as a global pandemic which had originated in Asia, had rippled through the known world, was overwhelming the Medical system, it was overwhelming the economy. It was overwhelming the government's capacity to respond. And that moment called for real leadership. And Marcus Aurelius stepped up, just like these men and women have.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  And so I reached out to the general there, who's been a wonderful supporter of mine. And I said, hey, how can I help? And he asked if I would get on a Zoom call and talk to some of the leaders in the fighter wing and at the base, which of course I was totally honored to do. It's a little strange doing these things over Zoom. I would have loved to do it in person. What I wanted to do is just riff on some of these Stoic ideas and how they can apply to what must be an overwhelming and stressful situation that real lives depend on them being able to respond to this well. And I think we can learn from them about how to step up, about how to stay strong. They have all the same concerns that you do and I do. They're concerned about their family. They're concerned about their job. They're concerned about their country.

• 3:06Ryan Holiday?

  They're just concerned, right? But Stoicism can help walk us through this. And so what I came up with were sort of five strategies from Stoic philosophy, five insights where the Stoics, I think, showed what the philosophy looked like, rather than just tell us what it should be. And so I'll give you some of these clips here, but I think at the core of it, Stoicism is designed for situations like this. It's designed for when things are scary. It's designed for when we're overwhelmed. It's designed for when shit goes south. And you know, the Stoics say, we don't control what happens, we control how we respond. And most of all, they say that even though things are not going to go the way we want them to be, they're not going to go the way we want them to go. They're not going to go as planned.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  That still presents an opportunity for us to rise to the occasion, right? The obstacle is the way means that everything is an opportunity for excellence. And I think we've seen some real excellence from our armed forces. In fact, it's probably one of the few arms of government worldwide that has not let us down. And so we can teach them, they can teach us, but mostly I think we can all learn that this is not a drill and this is what philosophy is for.

• 4:15Ryan Holiday?

  What I thought we would do is we can sort of walk through some ideas from Stoic philosophy, which is what I write about, sort of how it pertains to leadership. But instead of me telling you what Stoic philosophy is, I'd sort of rather show it in practice. You know, we can think that sort of philosophy is this abstract thing, this sort of academic discipline, but in reality, it's meant for precisely the kinds of situations that you guys find yourselves in, that average citizens here stateside find ourselves in, and unfortunately, that people all over the world find themselves in, which is a lot of uncertainty, which is a lot of sort of overwhelming sort of forces outside of their control.

• 4:59Ryan Holiday?

  But what we have to do is figure out how to navigate that, and then ideally, how to be our best selves within that. And so if you've got pen or paper, I'm just going to go through these five bullets over the course of the talk. If you forget everything else I'm saying, I think these sort of five bullets or mantras are maybe sort of worth sticking with. I have some, you might have seen, I have them, the Stoics are sort of big on mantras, so I've tattooed a few of them on my arms. But the idea is like, what do we revert back to? What do we return to when things are stressful and things are overwhelming? How do we sort of have these sort of bottom lines, what General Mattis has called sort of our flat ass rules? What are the rules we turn to?

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  What are the ideas that we turn to that are kind of true in all situations? One of Lincoln's favorites, for instance, was "And this too shall pass." That's a little depressing, a little powerless, so I want to give you guys some more that I think will apply to where you guys are, what you're doing right now, and then hopefully we can talk through questions or thoughts you guys have afterwards. So the first one from Stoic philosophy, I think the most central of them is basically this. It's, "We don't control what happens, but we always control how we respond." And Epictetus, one of the most interesting Stoics, he's born into slavery, he spends

• 6:24Ryan Holiday?

  Thirty years as a slave owned by someone who was high up in Nero's administration. Epictetus happens to be James Stockdale's favorite philosopher. Actually, as he's parachuting into Vietnam, he says to himself, you know, I'm entering the world of Epictetus. But Epictetus's first thing, he said, the first, the chief, most important task in life for a philosopher, or a person, or a soldier, is is that we have to separate things into two categories, what's up to us and what's not up to us. And he says, where is there good and evil? I think what he means is where is positive or negative? It's in my choices.

• 7:06Ryan Holiday?

  In some respects, this idea is sort of accepting a radical amount of powerlessness, that huge swaths of what's happened are outside of our control. But what we embrace is what we do with this reality. Carl Malantes wrote a beautiful, sort of haunting novel about his experiences in Vietnam. And there's a phrase in that book, it appears something like forty times. And the phrase is, "There it is." And I think that's kind of a beautiful expression, if you think about it. Life is, there it is. You know, Malantes didn't ask to get drafted. He didn't ask to get sent to Vietnam. Nobody asked to be in the middle of a pandemic.

• 7:51Ryan Holiday?

  Nobody asked, you know, find out that their spouse was cheating on them. Nobody asked to get cancer. Nobody asked for most of what happens in life. In fact, we've often, if we did ask, we would have asked for the opposite of whatever this is, whatever's in front of us. Certainly, I didn't ask to be locked down in my house. I didn't ask for, you know, large swaths of my business to be shut down. I didn't ask, you know, not to be able to see you guys in person, but to do this remotely. But there it is, right? That's the reality. And so if you think about the plane that most people exist on, it's that they spend a lot of time fighting what there it is, is, right?

• 8:34Ryan Holiday?

  Hiding reality, we're arguing with reality, we're denying reality, we're looking to to place blame for reality. Basically, we're sort of stuck in the distant or the recent past. And we're not even thinking about the future, which can kind of be its own, you know, set of things outside of our control. But the cost of this is the present, right? The cost of this, the expense there is is what you can do in the moment right now. So at the core of Stoicism is accepting this powerlessness and then seizing this power, which is that we control what we're going to do about the situation at hand, right?

• 9:14Ryan Holiday?

  Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, you know, he talks about, he says, you know, there's always things you can do to make a situation worse. And there's always things you can do to make a situation better. And so how do we focus then on making a given situation better? That's where I think we all are right now and what we always have to be thinking about. So it's it's how quick can I accept this? The Stoics use the word ascent, A S S E N T. Marcus Aurelius also calls this the art of acquiescence. And and I think just at the core of that is like, OK, look, I don't control what has happened. I don't control why it happened. I don't control whose fault it was that it happened, but I do control how I'm going to respond.

• 9:57Ryan Holiday?

  And that leads us right into the next exercise, the next sort of mantra I have for you. The next one comes and I think is embodied by a sort of a pantheon of Stoic leaders. But it's basically the idea that when systems break down, leaders step up or a Stoic steps up. So if we can kind of look at some of the dark moments in in Roman history, Julius Caesar overthrows or attempts to overthrow the Roman Republic, and he runs smack into Cato, who steps up and and basically tries tries to to save the government that that he was so dedicated to. We go back even further. Marcus Aurelius didn't ask to be the emperor of Rome. He was a bright kid, a promising kid.

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  His father was not emperor, but he was chosen by the Emperor Hadrian to inherit the throne. He's adopted. Marcus probably would have been rather rather been a philosopher or just about anything, but but to hold the command at this level. And and there it is, it fell in his lap. And on top of that falling in his lap, shortly after he takes over power. What we now know as the Antonine Plague hits Rome. It's a global pandemic that originates in China. It spreads over the poorest borders of an enormous empire. People fall sick within a few days. Symptoms grow very worse. It's gruesome. It's horrifying. Mortality rate is about 1 to 3%. Governments fail in response to this.

• 11:27Ryan Holiday?

  Politicians sort of delay. They don't respond quick enough. It overwhelms the medical system. The economy still starts to falter. So this might sound a little bit familiar to you guys. It's a bit haunting to think that 2,000 years ago, you know, Italy was experiencing almost identical events as to what is happening right now. But what does Marcus Aurelius do in this situation? Well, he steps up because that's what leaders do. You know, most of the wealthy people in Rome fled Rome. Marcus stayed. Marcus puts a Galen, probably the greatest medical mind of antiquity, in charge of response to the plague. You know, he seeks out every medical advancement possible.

• 12:11Ryan Holiday?

  He consults every oracle and temple and priest that he can. I think the most beautiful moment in Marcus's reign comes as the economic crisis that pandemics often precipitate. As that hits Rome, this is where Marcus has the most control, where he has the most influence. And so what does Marcus do? Well, first, he tears up, or actually burns, most of the debts owed to Rome at this time. He's trying to relieve pressure on people. And then, seeing that this is not enough, he starts to conscript capital from the wealthy. He begins to audit government expenditures to make sure government officials are serving the people, not the other way around.

• 12:54Ryan Holiday?

  And then, most beautifully, he walks through the Imperial Palace and he notices all these, you know, sort of priceless treasures and jewels and gifts that have been given to the emperor, all those sort of perks of the job. And he gathers them all up and he has them sold in a fire sale on the lawn of the Imperial Palace. And he uses this money to keep Rome going, to replenish the treasury. And so... I think to me, this is the embodiment of Stoic leadership, right? When things start to break down, when things start to fall apart, what happens is that leaders step up, leaders start to do their job. Not all leaders, and in fact, this is often a pretty good test of whether a leader is

• 13:35Ryan Holiday?

  good or bad, is how they respond to these high-pressure situations. Good leaders are improved by crisis, good leaders show us who they are in crisis, and bad leaders do the same. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. But I think what's, there's that beautiful line, if any of your kids have watched Mr. Rogers, but there's that sort of viral quote from Mr. Rogers that comes up. I think he actually said this after RFK was assassinated, but it popped up again after 9/11, it pops up now. It talks about looking for the helpers, right? He says, "We can find inspiration in looking for the people who sort of do good in a crisis." And Seneca, one of the other early Stoics, he says the same thing.

• 14:17Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "Disaster is virtues opportunity." And obviously, you guys are precisely the kinds of leaders that step up in these situations. This is what your job is, this is what you train for. But I can imagine even at the base, inside your teams, you can see what kind of leaders you have, which leaders step up, which leaders don't step up. As Churchill talks about the finest hour, is this going to be the finest hour for you or is it not? Is this going to be an opportunity that makes you better? Is this going to be something that you use that improves you? That's the question, I think, here. And so what happens is that a Stoic steps up.

• 14:58Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius talks about, I think it's one of the more beautiful lines and medications. He writes this to himself, "As there's a plague, as there's wars on the foreign border, as all sorts of, everything that can go wrong is going wrong." And he says, "No, it's not unfortunate that this happens." He says, "It's fortunate that it happened to me." Because not everyone would be able to handle it like I'm handling it. Not everyone would be able to deal with this. And so, again, it's not what happens, it's how we respond. And when these things happen, how do we respond? Well, how do we step up? How do we meet the needs of other people? That's ultimately, to me, the finest definition of leadership. And we see this throughout American history.

• 15:42Ryan Holiday?

  Washington steps up in the revolution. FDR, you know, steps up during the Great Depression. Truman suddenly finds a presidency foisted upon him, steps up. In some of the sort of greatest turning points in American history, leaders have stepped up. And they've stepped up at all levels. It's not just presidents, it's not just emperors. But people who have jobs step up and do those jobs when we need them done the most, and the stakes are the highest. I think if we can get into the next Stoic idea, we find out that we're made for each other. One of my favorite expressions for Marcus Aurelius is, what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee.

• 16:22Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things that pandemics show us, that emergencies show us, that crises show us, that international troubles show us, is that we're not alone, that we're much more interconnected than maybe we thought, maybe than we assume. There's a great meme here in the US that's passed around, and we don't have to get into the political implications of it, but it's basically the idea of, hey, maybe it turns out that those factory workers and those warehouse stockers and those, you know, delivery people that we didn't think were worth a higher minimum wage, oh, lo and behold, it turns out they're actually pretty important. Hey, it actually turns out that, you know, you can't just lock yourself down and pretend that you're the only country on the planet.

• 17:07Ryan Holiday?

  America first works only insofar as we can make sure that the rest of the world isn't importing problems inside our borders, that we live in an ecosystem and that the good of the many affects the good of the individual and the good of the individual affects the good of the many, that we're all interconnected. And that's what Marcus Aurelius is talking about. One of the beautiful passages in Meditations He says, I'm a citizen of the world. And I think you guys are the physical embodiment of that idea. Your American forces stationed overseas and basically, American forces have been forced to be stationed overseas for decades now because we realize that how interconnected

• 17:50Ryan Holiday?

  things are and that if we turn a blind eye to what's happening overseas, if we if we focus on ourselves exclusively, actually, that's not in our long term self interest. That the good of the individual depends on the good of the collective. And Marcus Aurelius, he says, you know, he says, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. And that expression of the common good appears in meditations, something like 40 times. Over and over again, he's trying to remind himself, even though he's the head of the Roman Empire, that it's really the world that matters, that really it's the good of everyone that matters. You know, he says, keep in mind that all rational

• 18:29Ryan Holiday?

  things are related and that to care for all human beings is part of being a human being. We have to remind ourselves that things are connected, he says, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with one another. This event is the consequence of some other one. Things push and pull on each other, breathe together and are one. That's another funny idea I heard recently. It's like, if you doubt that an individual can change history, then you haven't heard of the person who ate a bat, right? A single individual in China affected the entire future of humanity on this planet. And I don't think that's overstating it. And so that's how a single human can affect

• 19:13Ryan Holiday?

  everyone negatively. But conversely, a single human can impact everyone positively. And I think America has been a great example of that. And I think this is reminding us, oh, actually, we can't close our eyes, we can't close our mind, we can't close our borders. What we have to figure out is how do we work within a system? How do we protect our people? But at the same time, realize that the fate and the safety of other people directly affects the safety and the help of each other. And so I think that's why Marcus doesn't flee Rome, even though he could have during the pandemic. That's why ultimately, you know, he sacrifices so much. He realizes that it's in sacrificing ourselves that we serve humanity, which is really our job

• 19:54Ryan Holiday?

  on this planet. The next lesson, I've got two more. The next lesson in Stoicism is basically, and I think this is particularly apt now. My mentor, Robert Greene, said this to me early on my career when I was going through some stuff. He said, a live time or dead time. You choose whether something is going to be a live time or dead time. And if we look at this historically, you know, Isaac Newton, basically, you know, does his greatest writings and thinking on calculus while in quarantine for the plague. Shakespeare writes King Lear while in quarantine from the plague. Human beings have been on lockdown, have been stuck, have found themselves in undesirable positions where their freedom

• 20:38Ryan Holiday?

  is sort of temporarily or artificially constrained for as long as there have been human beings. But the question is, what do we do with that time? Epictetus, he says, every situation has two handles. He's like the one that will bear weight and the one that won't. And Thomas Jefferson loved this expression. He shortened it. He says, always grab the smooth handle, right? The handle that makes things better rather than the handle that makes things worse. And so as, as we experience various, you know, whether it's you guys are posted overseas for an extended period of time, or maybe you have a job for an extended posting that you would have rather had something else, or maybe, you know, you're stuck indoors, or maybe it's just raining and you can't go outside

• 21:23Ryan Holiday?

  for the day. What the Stoic wants you to focus on always, if we think about that idea, we don't control what happens, we control how we respond. It's what are we going to do in response to this? What are we going to do with the time? Cato, the elder, one of the early Sort of Stoic inspirations, you know, he talks about, he's like, when a farmer, he's like, a farmer can't afford to be idle. He's like, when you're stuck indoors, find a way to clean up, start planning, start thinking. And so what the Stoics want us to do as a time like this is use that time productively. As a writer, I'm somewhat lucky, right? The quarantine life is not all that different than the normal writing life. In fact, it's probably closer to what I should be doing day in and day out than maybe what I would want to do with

• 22:05Ryan Holiday?

  all the temptations and distractions out there. So I'm trying to use this time to be very productive. I'm trying to write. I'm trying to reach out to people. I'm trying to invest in relationships. One of the things my wife and I are talking about is just like, okay, this is a radical experiment and a different lifestyle, less money, less, you know, sort of outside opportunities, less travel, home more, eating at home more, being more connected with your neighbors, having to do more. It's just different, right? You wouldn't have chose this, but it is what it is. Now the question is, well, are you going to learn from this? Or are you just going to go, yeah, I didn't choose this, so it is what it is. And then I'm going to immediately revert back to normal and things, you know,

• 22:47Ryan Holiday?

  go back to normal. And so what I'm thinking about here for me is, okay, what can I learn from this? What things can I try that I ordinarily wouldn't try? You know, what am I liking about this? What am I not liking about this? You know, one of the things that being stuck does is it gives you time to think. And if we can look back at history and people who wrote great works when they were in prison, or people who came up with, you know, new ideas while they were in prison, or people who, who were exiled, right? Many of the Stoics were exiled and they experienced sort of that idea of being far from home, away from their friends, away from their loved ones. But what they wanted to do always was focus on what they controlled within that, and then how could they use that time? You know,

• 23:31Ryan Holiday?

  the amount of people that I've heard that have just sort of used this time to catch up on Netflix, or that are putting on weight, or are just waiting for this to be over, that's dead time, right? And, and there's, there's a certain amount of delusion in that. And also arrogance, right? Because what if this is the last month that you have on this planet? I think one of the things that this pandemic is reminding people of is that life is very short and that death is out there and that, you know, things can get cut short. And so that's why we can't afford to waste time. And so this idea of a live time, dead time, to me, is an essential practice in Stoicism. It's the idea of which handle in a situation are we going to grab?

• 24:14Ryan Holiday?

  Are we going to say, this is outside of my control, my flight's delayed? I'm just going to sit here and fall asleep in this chair? Or we're going to say, my flight's delayed and now I'm going to read a book. My flight's delayed, now I'm going to, you know, reread that memo. I'm going to write a, you know, I'm going to write something to people I care about. I'm going to make a phone call, I'm going to, how am I going to use this time productively? This is ultimately what the Stoics are always thinking about. Seneca writes, "You live as if you were destined to live forever. No thought of your frailty ever enters your head. Of how much time has already gone by, you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, that all the while, that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last."

• 25:00Ryan Holiday?

  And so reminding ourselves that this is finite, that we have to use this moment because we might not get another moment is essential. So this is where we are right now, there it is. And now we're faced with a choice, right? How are we going to use this? How do we have the courage to make this a live time? Not just this pandemic, but I think all situations. And then the final lesson, if we can think about leadership, and I think this is something we're seeing confirmed across governments. We're seeing confirmed across political parties. We're seeing this confirmed across leaders, whether they're bosses or mayors or influencers in the media. What we're being reminded of is this sort of timeless dictum that the Stoics love,

• 25:43Ryan Holiday?

  which is that character is fate. And I think that what we're being reminded of as we look at the leaders who have done a really good job and the leaders who have done a really horrendous job is that the character is fate. And so I think for too long, we've been a little spoiled. We've focused on, is this person of the same political party as me? Is this person going to stick it to the people that I disagree with? Does this person have power that I can benefit from? Right? Is this person going to juice my stock market portfolio? Is this person going to lower my taxes? Is this person going to virtue signal about this cause or that cause? And what I think we're seeing right now is a reminder that, hey, this leadership thing is really important because people's lives are on the line.

• 26:28Ryan Holiday?

  And so the idea for the Stoics is that character is fate. But ultimately, what determines how a leader is going to respond, how a unit is going to do under pressure, how a person is going to do under pressure, is highly predicated on their character, who they are as a person. So I'll give you an example. Uber, one of the fastest growing companies in history with billions and millions of dollars. For many years, they developed a culture about, we want the smartest, we want the most aggressive, we want the guys that will do anything to succeed. And these are the kinds of engineers and salespeople and leaders that they hired inside the organization. And this worked for a time, right? It was, they were extremely successful.

• 27:12Ryan Holiday?

  And then came a woman named Susan Fowler. Susan Fowler happens to be pretty unassuming, not someone you might have thought would change history, not someone you thought would stand up. But if you had watched her or saw her reading the Stoics, if you saw her character, maybe you wouldn't have been so surprised by this. She ends up writing a memo about Uber's heinous sexual harassment culture, sort of its win-at-all-costs mentality. And ultimately, this single individual brings down the CEO of this organization, changes the course of the company, is one of the main drivers of the Me Too movement. And I think we've seen this in a bunch of different instances. Throughout history, whistleblowers bring down corrupt institutions,

• 27:55Ryan Holiday?

  single individuals or leaders with immense character and courage can change the course, can move the freighter, can provide a wake-up call. Character is fate, and it's Not just good character creates good outcomes, but ultimately, bad character compounds and almost guarantees bad outcomes. So are we surprised that, you know, sort of populist leaders who told us what we wanted to hear, you know, who trafficked in untruths, who took shortcuts, who were petty, who were mean? And again, this is, this is not just in the United States, this is cross-cultural. This is, this is unfortunately not bipartisan flaw.

• 28:38Ryan Holiday?

  But the, but the character reveals, and these crises really lay that character bare. So, you know, ultimately, what we have to be cultivating in the men and women that you guys lead in ourselves is character first, right? Character competence. These, this is what will ultimately reveal itself, what we need to be cultivating, because it's the most important variable, right? The Stoics would say that in addition to death and taxes, the immutable and inescapable law is that character is fate, character is destiny. Actually, John McCain wrote a book called Character is Destiny. I think he's a great example of that. His, his time in the Navy was not, he didn't blow the doors off anything.

• 29:23Ryan Holiday?

  People weren't particularly impressed. He wasn't great in school. He got in trouble. He was nobody's favorite guy. But there in that prison camp in, in North Vietnam, there, that was where the character really came out. And what John McCain was, whether you agree with his policies or not, was a man of immense character, I think. And throughout his career, even when he messed up, even when he got in trouble, you know, even when there were, you know, sort of contentious events or, or intense political disagreements, what ultimately came across, what ultimately came through, what ultimately he led by was his character. And I think so, look, liars and cheats eventually destroy themselves. The corrupt overreach, the ignorant make fatal self-inflicted mistakes.

• 30:06Ryan Holiday?

  The egotistical ignore data and challenges and warnings that could help them. And the selfish end up isolated and alone, even if they're famous and rich. This puts this more bluntly, he says, Roberts, perverts, killers and tyrants. They always end up in a hell of their own making. And I, I think it's something that's true almost as a law of gravity, right? And the power of character is predictive, it's prophetic. And, and character is fate. That's why we have to cultivate character in our kids, in our troops, in ourselves, in our systems, in our culture, because character is going to determine who we are and what we do when things matter. Those are the five lessons. Uh, we don't control what happens, we control how we respond.

• 30:49Ryan Holiday?

  When the systems break down, leaders stand up. What injures the hive injures the bee. Alive time or dead time, which will it be? Are going to grab the, the smooth handle. And then finally, character is fate. That's what I got for you guys. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys again. Thank you guys for your service. Uh, thank you for, for manning the front lines on this, uh, this pandemic. I can't thank you enough. And, uh, if we got some questions, I'm, I got time.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Hey Ryan, thanks again for being here, brother. So, uh,

• 31:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Do you want to give us a, some kind of a short three to five reading list? I mean, you've mentioned a few of them already, but anything for this time right now, you'd recommend us take a look at? They would help us through this time and maybe not just right now as well on the recovery out of this as well.

• 31:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's, that's a great question. Um, if I was to recommend some books. Well, I wouldn't recommend Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the post-apocalyptic novel of a, of a father, uh, and his son trying to survive. I, I was actually planning on reading that right before this happened. And now it is going very much, uh, uh, to the, to the back of the pile. Um, I read Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times recently. I thought it was pretty incredible. I, I really liked that. Andrew Roberts, uh, who wrote a great book about, uh, Winston Churchill, uh, wrote, wrote, has a sort of a compendium of ideas about leadership, uh, that I think it's called Leadership in War. Uh, that's probably worth, uh, reading.

• 32:18Ryan Holiday?

  What I would urge people to do is look historically, one of the ways I think, you know, we, you know, uh, you could read history of the Peloponnesian War and you've got. You know, the jockeying of Athens and Sparta, sort of very similar to the jockeying of America and China, plus, you know, you've got a plague and Pericles, you know, funeral oration, you've got, I think you can look historically and get some perspective and learn on these things, that's always great. You could recommend the Stoics, I think Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is pretty apt in a time like this. I read a book by Musonius Rufus, who's one of the early Stoics, and it's called That You Should Disdain Hardships,

• 32:59Ryan Holiday?

  and it's sort of a book about adversity. So I might start with some of those, but biographies of great people who lived through difficult times is probably where I'd start. What would you say to critics of Stoicism who claim that we lose the interpersonal connection? Epictetus, don't worry. Okay, so, so yeah, I think this is sort of a myth, or Brooks is saying, basically, does this sort of turn you into an emotional robot? And I think nothing could be further from the truth. You know, Epictetus adopts a kid who he would tuck into bed every night, you know, Epictetus, sorry, Seneca was funny, you know, Marcus Aurelius wept for the victims of the plague, there's one of the Stoics who even dies of

• 33:40Ryan Holiday?

  laughter. What the Stoics were saying, though, is that we had to have, we had to have emotions, we just didn't want to be a slave to our emotions. And so Brooks mentions one of the more controversial, sort of, I think provocative exercises in Stoicism from Epictetus. So every night when Epictetus would tuck his son into bed, he would, he would say to himself, like, you, you might not live until the morning. And I don't think that he was trying to say, I don't love my kid, I don't want to get attached to him. I think he was saying precisely the opposite. I think he was saying, I love this person so much that I'm not going to rush through this experience, because it may well be the last one that I'm lucky enough to have. And so, I think as far as emotions go, what the Stoics were

• 34:25Ryan Holiday?

  about, were about sort of really drinking in the present moment, accepting that it could be taken from us at any time, just like our own lives could be taken from us at any time, but what we wouldn't do is, is take that for granted.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  One of the character strengths is beauty and excellence in positive psychology, beauty and excellence. And I know in meditations, Marcus really talks about appreciation of beauty. And in a time like this, sometimes things just become dark, they become ugly. We can turn inward a little bit more. Is there an answer for that? Or how do the Stoics approach that?

• 35:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think, like, for instance, in New York, in the quarantine, you're not allowed to leave your house basically for any reason, except to go outside for your own mental health. And I think there's something profound in that, right? Like, I think a lot of people are discovering, like, so I've never seen my neighbors walk outside more than I've watched them over the last month, right? Because I think we can take for granted being outside and just this sort of ordinary beauty of our surroundings. And so I think one of the things that the Stoics want us to practice, that we need to practice, especially in times like this, is appreciating what's around us, the ordinary things, looking up at the stars at night,

• 35:50Ryan Holiday?

  you know, watching the sunrise, looking at the dew on the grass. And when you read meditations, which is written during a horrendous dark plague, there was, you know, real shit going on in Marcus's life. What you do see there are all sorts of, you know, profound meditations on beauty, on ordinary things, you know, experiences, he's deliberately sort of forcing himself to see what's around him. And I think that that's important is, you know, it's turn off the news for a minute, go outside, look around outside, exercise, read something beautiful, have a conversation with someone you love.

• 36:30Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I think we do need to be reminded of those positives, or yeah, it can get overwhelming and depressing pretty quickly.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Hey Ryan, two questions. First, with regards to the plague during Marcus Aurelius's time, do you have any other reading other than meditations that shares some of those parallels with what we're dealing with right now?

• 36:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I wrote an article about it, so I'll send it to you guys and you can pass it around. But there's also a biography of Marcus Aurelius by a guy named Frank McLinn, where he talks about it quite a bit. The other book, I haven't read it yet, but there's a new book about London during the Blitz that I've heard good things from people as far as undergoing a siege kind of a thing. I think it's called "The Beautiful and the Vile," which, again, is an analogous situation, overwhelming, ceaseless barrage of worry

• 37:31Ryan Holiday?

  and doubt, physical danger. But how do you maintain that keep calm, carry on mentality? I might check out that book as well.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Okay. And then the second question, General Petraeus just published a reflection on how this situation is reflecting more in terms of the Groundhog Day concept of we, for our mental resilience, try to get ourselves into a routine, but then that routine ends up dulling us in that we get complacent and that whole alive time or dead time that you're talking about. Do you have any reflections on how to avoid that Groundhog Day mentality while still staying in a routine?

• 38:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I think it can depend. I think some people have not had a routine for a very long time, and they are now under quarantine, under stress, really, really suffering extra because the chaos of the outside world, plus the chaos of their personal lives, quickly becomes untenable. So some people need to use this as an opportunity to develop some routine and structure inside their lives. I mean, I've got two young kids at home, so we're going through this right now. It's like, oh, wait, school was the routine, and we didn't have to be as disciplined in our house because so much of it was already

• 38:52Ryan Holiday?

  structured. And now it's like, hey, if we don't insist on a routine, if we don't have a routine, nobody's going to survive this.

• 39:00Ryan Holiday?

  But on the other hand, I think for for some of us, this is a great, you know, opportunity to shake things up and try things differently, you know. There are people who are working from home from the for the first time. Or there are people who are, you know, suddenly, I think it's interesting. There's like lost cities like Los Angeles or cities in India are like, oh, wait, this is what the city looks like without pollution, without people spending hours a day in their car. Maybe this is a better way of life. So it can also give us new perspective, see things from a different angle. Or in the case of no pollution, see things clearly for the first time. I do think, you know, if we're looking at some root causes of this, you know, the United States kind of has walked through raindrops, not just the last few years, but but even going back,

• 39:45Ryan Holiday?

  you know, the the the Great Recession turned out not to be as bad as maybe some people thought at the time. And and, you know, we kind of have walked through raindrops. So I think we maybe got a little bit complacent thinking, oh, things seem really bad, but then the hurricane veers at the last moment. Or things seem really bad, but then, you know, uh, like even the American system, right? The whole idea was like, hey, we might have a crisis in California or a crisis in Louisiana or a crisis in Florida, but we'll never have a crisis everywhere all at the same time. And so we kind of got complacent. We kind of, I think our larger version of that Groundhog's Day thing was, hey, things look bad, but ultimately it turns out OK.

• 40:29Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, here we are in a situation where it's not turning out OK, where we really did get the full brunt of it. And maybe we weren't fully prepared for that. And so this this can this can be a lesson in that as well. This is Airman might not be used to reflecting or meditating or have recommendations. Uh, yeah, so, uh, how to sort of introduce people to philosophy and encourage productivity or reflection. So I send out an email every day for the Daily Stoic, which is just sort of one thought on Stoic philosophy. It's short, it's accessible, it's usually in the form of a story or a quote. You can sign up for that, it's free, it's a pretty good starting point.

• 41:10Ryan Holiday?

  The book, The Daily Stoic, is a page a day. I get this question a lot from coaches, because their athletes are kind of similar. They're like racehorses. They're just super trained, super specialized. They're bred for this one thing. How do you introduce them to things a little bit outside their comfort zone? I think you can lead by example. Start with a quote every day, or a passage every day. Show them what this looks like. Walk them through it as a group. I think that's one way to do it. For me, the best form of reflection or meditation, reading is a big part of it, but I think just sitting down and doing some journaling, just writing down your thoughts, is a forced

• 41:53Ryan Holiday?

  way to reflect and to think big picture, to connect to different things that you've learned or studied. And so I think pushing your airmen or your servicemen and servicewomen towards just carving out some time in the morning to sit and think, or to write with a journal, is a great way to build this practice. Cal Newport has a book called Deep Work, which is really great. And I think doing some deep work in the morning, where you're just thinking, where you're learning, where you're not on your phone, the TV's not running in the background, you're by yourself, that solitude and reflection in the morning, I think is really, really important.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks, Ryan, for being with us today. We've been emailing back and forth about what you can do, and thanks for reaching out. And I think the whole team saw the deliberate preparation you did for us in the sheets of paper there. I know you've been working on this for a few weeks, so thank you for that. Thanks for getting up early as well. I know it's early there in Texas, so that's fantastic. But you mentioned at the very beginning, I think it's really important for us to consider, when we take a look back in time, it seems like years ago, but it was just months ago, that you were out with us, Ryan, and teaching us again. And so it was about three weeks, no kidding, from the time that you left and spent some time with us, that Lombardi out west in Milan, COVID just exploded. And then it started moving from that area in the west

• 43:20Speaker 01

  to the east, to where we are, pretty rapidly. And as I think we sit back and we reflect and we think about where we are right now... This team has responded in an amazing way, brother. And I just want to say that you're a huge part of that because we have rallied, I think, around Stoicism, whether we realize that all the time or not. We've been using the teachings that you taught us. And when you take a look at all the things that you just discussed, you talked about the number one, right? We don't control what happens to us. We control where we respond. We've been doing that with our airmen, our soldiers and our families. That's really been the cornerstone of that. And you take a look at character's fate, the fifth thing you talked about, and then leaders step up. All these leaders right here, particularly our squander commanders and our WSA chiefs have stepped up in a big way.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  And then you take a look at what's good for the bee is good for the hive. We've got amazing volunteers doing amazing things all around the wing. Our grocery store on base, we've got over 200 volunteers taking food and things to our families that can't go anywhere off base. So it's just been amazing to watch the team deliver, the team step up. And it's really, I think, in large part to how you helped us think about things. And we're really leaning on that Stoic philosophy as the foundation of what we're doing right now. Face those challenges, this doc deal paradox, but in the end have the faith that we'll prevail in the end. So you made a huge difference, brother, in the past when you were here just a few months ago. You made a huge difference with us here today. So just can't thank you enough for being part of Wyver Nation. And we look forward to seeing you in person soon and give you a big hug and a thanks for what you've been doing for us.

• 44:48Ryan Holiday?

  No, I'm really honored. And I think the idea that that, you know, it wasn't that long ago, I think, is not a bad Stoic reminder too, which is like, life comes at you fast, right? We think, we think we've got it handled. We think, you know, everything's set and, you know, life, life has a way of making quick work of our plans. And that's, that's why this resilience is so important. And that, most of all, that's why what you guys do is so important because, you know, you're there on the front line so, so to sort of protect the people from home. And I can't thank you guys enough for the work you do and for the opportunity to, to talk to y'all. And you've got my email, so hit me up anytime if you need anything else. And, and I really appreciate it.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ryan. Have a good day, man. Got one return with honor for you for the team. Return with honor!

• 45:39Ryan Holiday?

  Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoic email, go to dailystoic.com/email.