Don’t Just Settle For a Shortcut, Do The Work | Peace Is In Staying the Course

“When things are scary, when we’re overwhelmed, when we’re struggling, it’s tempting to look for a shortcut, for a pill that makes you feel better, for a TV show that helps you turn off your brain. Nothing makes that clearer than the last couple years of alarmingly destabilizing global events. People have turned to all sorts of magical solutions to get through these dark days, from meditation to self-help gurus to sending countless tweets and petitions off into cyberspace.”Ryan discusses how to find freedom in the process of improving yourself, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. Visit http://linkedin.com/stoic to get fifty dollars off your first job post.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: 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 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, Marcus Rilius, Seneca, and some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  "Don't just settle for a shortcut. Do the work. When things are scary, when we're overwhelmed, when we're struggling, it's tempting to find yourself looking for a shortcut, for a pill that makes you feel better, for a TV show that helps you turn off your mind. Nothing makes that clearer than the last couple of years of destabilizing and alarming global events, to which people have turned to all sorts of magical solutions, from meditation to self-help gurus, to sending countless tweets and petitions off into cyberspace. These things help us cope with the overwhelming world around us, but of course, only temporarily."

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Tim Ferriss and Tyler Cowen recently talked about this on Tim Ferriss's podcast. Tim asked what Tyler might recommend, besides the wisdom of the Stoics, what would help people find equanimity and peace amidst the craziness. Tyler's answer was counterintuitive, as always. He said, "I feel a bit of the people in that position. It's like they want a kind of talisman, like a voodoo object. I don't know if they really want to be more detached and dispassionate, or if they just want the talisman. And maybe my advice to think through would be, do you just want the talisman?" That's a great question to ask ourselves when we're reading the Stoics, watching the

• 2:02Speaker 01

  news, or considering an experiment with plant medicines. Are we after a talisman or the real thing? Are we actually trying to improve, or do we just want to make ourselves feel better for a second? Do we just want to do something, or really, anything will do?

• 2:20Speaker 01

  There is a time and place for both strategies, but of course, the Stoics would favor focusing on the real work, on deeds, not just words. They wouldn't want you to settle for letting yourself off the hook for some symbolic gesture or tidy consolation. They'd want you to do the real uncomfortable work on yourself or on the world around you. The training we're doing as Stoics is not easy. It's not a matter of reading one book. It's not signing up for an email or buying a coin. It's a process. It's an ongoing thing. It's committing to a hard path. It's committing to a way of life. It's about doing the work. This morning, this evening, tomorrow, right this very moment.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  Peace is in staying the course. Tranquility can't be grasped except by those who have reached an unwavering and firm power of judgment. The rest constantly fall and rise in their decisions, wavering in a state of alternately rejecting and accepting things. What is the cause of this back and forth? It's because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide, common opinion. That's Seneca Moral Letters. In Seneca's essay on tranquility, he uses the Greek word euphemia, which he defines as believing in yourself and trusting that you are on the right path and not being in doubt by following the myriad of footpaths of those wandering in every direction.

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  It is this state of mind, he said, that produces tranquility. Clarity of vision allows us to have this belief. It's not that we're always going to be 100% certain of everything, or that we even should be. Rather, it's that we can rest assured that we are heading generally in the right direction, that we don't need to constantly compare ourselves with other people or change our mind every three seconds based on new information. Instead, tranquility and peace are found in identifying our path and in sticking to it. Staying the course, making adjustments here and there naturally, but ignoring the distracting sirens who beckon us toward the rocks. This is just one of my favorite passages from Seneca, this idea of euthymia. You know, he talks about, he says, "It's the sense of being on the path that you're on

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  and not being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours," he says, "'cause they're hopelessly lost." I think one of the things that brought this home for me is, I remember this vividly, it's one of the first things I ever wrote on the internet. You'll probably find it, but I was out for a run in college and I was running around this track and I was sort of going at my pace, thought I was going well, and then someone comes rushing up behind me and I can hear them and I pick quick in my pace and then they, they run faster and then I, you know, follow them or whatever. And it struck me, and then this person quit like two laps later and I had like 30 laps left to go, or I forget how far I was running. But the point was, it struck me then, it was like, "Oh yeah, you don't know what race other people are running and you don't know if they started before you, you don't know

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  if they're ending before you, you don't know if they're running way after you." And so you have to have this sense as a runner, as a swimmer, in any of the sort of endurance supports of like what your pace is, what your race strategy is. And you can't be distracted by other people. You can't, you have to know why you're doing what you're doing and you have to stick with it and you can't let the other paths that intersect yours or parallel to yours, you know, throw you off and, or, or you'll mess up your own strategy. And so this sense of, of who you are and what you're doing is, it's essential. And I think the pandemic has been good for that. For me, it's like, "Oh yeah, this is what I want my life to look like. Oh yeah, this is what I think is right or safe or good."

• 5:57Ryan Holiday?

  And the fact that other people are doing stuff on social media, you know, first off, who knows how honest they're being, but other, you know, just because they're doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea. I remember that thing your mom would say, "If everyone else jumped off a bridge." I remember I was talking to Austin Kleon and he said, "Look, you gotta remember," because he and I were talking about this, "You gotta remember that people who are being safe and smart are not posting about it because there's nothing to post. It's the crazy people who are showing themselves doing things, right? But that's what, that's what can mess with our compass." The sense of euthymia is not just essential to tranquility. It's essential to success. I remember at American Apparel, Doug Charney's big mistake was he got distracted by what H and M was doing and what Forever 21 was doing.

• 6:41Ryan Holiday?

  But these are fundamentally different companies with fundamentally different business models. It was a colossal mistake for him to try to compete with them. So let that be a lesson. Let's stay on our path. Let's not be distracted by the paths of those who are lost and around us and do our best while we can with what we've got to do. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.