This Isn’t How You’ll Be Measured | Ask DS

We know that ultimately lives are not measured by superficial or materialistic things…yet we spend so much of our lives focused solely on that. Ask DS: How can we move past feeling guilt or shame? What did the Stoics say about losing loved ones? How can we get better at saying no? + More! 📚 Grab a copy of Die With Zero by Bill Perkins | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎙️ Listen to Bill Perkins' interview | Apple Podcasts, Spotify, & Wondery🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour💡 The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Happy, and Free explores how stoic ideas can be applied to personal finance, wealth-building, financial mindset, and how it can help you overcome common financial obstacles and challengesGet The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Happy, and Free & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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. Well, 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.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  This isn't how you'll be measured. Seneca was a very rich man. Marcus Aurelius was too. Cicero's family made a fortune in business, and he made a fortune in law. We know this from the historical record, of course, but to the vast majority of people who even know the names of these men, their financial success is but a footnote. Instead, we admire Seneca for the incredible philosophy, he wrote. We admire Marcus Aurelius for how he lived and who he was as a person. Cicero's inspiring speeches against tyranny in his defense of the republic, this is his legacy. And what mattered far more to the people who knew and loved them in life was something entirely different and far more personal. We know that's how it works. We know that ultimately, our lives are not measured by superficial

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  or materialistic things, yet we spend so much of our lives focused solely on that. Look, if all you want to have is a pile of money at the end, well, I guess that's your choice, Bill Perkins writes in his fascinating book, Die with Zero. But bear in mind, he adds, that I have never seen somebody's total net worth posted on their tombstone.

• 1:45Ryan Holiday?

  When we launched The Wealthy Stoic a couple of months back, our course on what the Stoics taught and thought about money, people assumed we were selling Stoicism as a success strategy. We were, just not like they were thinking. Because Stoicism is a philosophy designed to help you become wealthy and successful, just not like that. It's a different kind of success. A different definition of wealth. Yes, it's a matter of fact that many of the Stoics were literally wealthy, but much more importantly, they were figuratively wealthy. They understood the value of things, what should be prized and what shouldn't be prized. And they knew how little they actually needed. They lived wealthy lives because they knew what was enough. And they were empowered because they could provide for themselves and their families. But most of all, they were wealthy because their lives were full of purpose and meaning.

• 2:29Ryan Holiday?

  Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. Epictetus says, that's what it means to be a wealthy Stoic. And that's what we get into in the Wealthy Stoic Course. How to be truly rich, how to get out from under the thumb of money and how to be happy with enough, how to thrive and succeed and live a good and happy life. If that's the kind of life you want, head over to dailystoic.com/wealthy. You can sign up today. And remember, if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you get this course and all our courses for free. So you can sign up for that over at dailystoiclife.com. And do read Die with Zero, it's a great book. We had Bill on the podcast recently. I thought it was a great interview and I'll link to that in today's show notes, too.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast where I answer your questions. As you know, and I've been bringing you some little snippets from the Q and As that I did in Sydney, in Melbourne. As you know, I'm on tour. I'm going to be in a bunch of different cities in Europe and two in Canada in November. You can grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver and Toronto at Ryan Holiday Night and Night Sash Tour. But in today's episode, I wanted to bring you some of the questions that the folks asked me in Sydney. I hope you enjoy. Thanks to everyone that came out and it's always a pleasure.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  G'day, everyone. Good to have you back. Lovely to hear you describe your time here in the country with your family, which leads me to ask, you didn't mention the day of the day. Which, as a father and a stepfather, I find enormously valuable. You've given us your example of people who aren't doing this work in the public eye. Who in your mind is doing this work so well as a father and perhaps even a leader of a company or a country? That's a great question. You know, I got so much out of writing The Daily Stoic, that every day thinking about these things, being forced to think about it from these different angles, to repeat these kind of timeless principles over and over again, has been so valuable to me personally.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  The reason I started Daily Dad was to force myself through that process as a parent. What's important, what actually matters, what's easy to miss, what are the values that I want to parent by? So I started Daily Dad, but around that idea, I think I started it when my youngest was maybe two or three, so I've been at it quite a while. And I couldn't say any better. I know it means perfect, but I'm struggling with it every day. I lose my temper every single day. Lose my shit every single day, is what I'm always saying. Wonder if you're any good at this? Wonder, you know, if you're doing this well? I think these are all important questions to be asking, but I've been doing Daily Dad for that reason. And I've gotten a lot out of it.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  And you can sign up if you don't want to forget it, it's just dailydad.com. It's not for dads, it's I'm a dad, it's one piece of parenting advice every day. But I wish I could say that these people are great parents.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, most people in the public eye are not. We find that out in retrospect.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And I'll leave it to their kids to decide whether they're good or not. But I do try to learn little things here and there. This is an interesting way to think about it, or conversely, here's a colossal tragic mistake that this person made that we can learn from. What do the parents who lost children have to tell us? What do the parents who, you know, lost touch with their children, what do they have to tell us? You know, what do parents who look further along, wish they'd done differently? That's what I've tried to build it around. And it's just my favorite thing to do, so thank you for the inspiration. Is there anyone who's not a Dune student we can talk to?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  No thanks.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Hi. Hi. Um, I think a lot of people in this room would be in a similar boat where you may have invested time to become more self-aware or conscious of your ego, which also catalyzes you to reflect on your own life and things you may have done in your life. And I've personally experienced moments of reflection or maybe guilt or shame of previous actions which may have been as a result of your ego. And they are no longer within your control. Um, so wondering how you navigate those experiences where you feel like you're not in control anymore and moving forward with those feelings of guilt-shooting?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Sandra said, "When I think of all the things I have said, I end in a use."

• 7:11Speaker 01

  As someone who's had a deeply unpleasant experience of ending my own books that have come out, I can relate to that. Nothing gets you cringe more than having to see things that you put out in print for millions of people and now you go, "What was I talking about? How did I possibly go qualified to say that?" So yeah, I did. If you look back on things you have done and said, ways you've treated people, and you never think, "Wow, I was an enormous idiot." You are probably in a sway of ego. You're a sage, which you are almost certainly not, or you're delusional. Um, this sort of cringe and pain that you feel,

• 7:55Speaker 01

  I mean, a positive way to think about this is we feel that because we've changed and evolved. And it would be strange if we look back at who we were when we were younger, when we knew less, when we experienced less, and we're just like, "Yeah, I got it totally right." Everything that's happened subsequently is that, zero new information or perspective, right? So it's good that we have this, but the ability to make amends, to own mistakes, to be responsible for things, this is a key, a key thing. It's certainly key as a parent. I know, I don't remember my parents ever apologizing for much. I try to apologize. To apologize is a day for something I said when I was frustrated. I try to own what I've done. I try to look loss in the mirror.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Sometimes that's really painful. Sometimes it's...

• 8:44Speaker 01

  You look at it so... You can't look at it straight on. You've got to see it from an angle and you're working on it. But to me, that's a sign of progress. And I'm trying to get better, to make new amends. And I see that as part of that self-improvement process. That's why we're doing the work. To learn things, to be better, and not be who we're used to be.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Such a big fan of yours.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  I have your books here. I wanted to ask you about the Daily Stoic of today. Today's song is about not letting your career, you know, be your life sentence and eventually letting it go. Since your career and way of life is stoicism, what is your succession plan? How do you plan to let it go?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  What were you trying to say?

• 9:38Speaker 01

  No, look, I have a thing I do. I go into like used bookstores. And I'm always struck by the large piles they have of books that were once popular. And then people gather them. They don't want them anymore. No one cares anymore. And you can see, you know, no one's moment in the spotlight is forever. We say that everyone has their 15 minutes of day. You know, no one's career goes on indefinitely. So I try to remind myself because there's, at some point, you reach the peak and it's all downhill from there. It might be slow, it might be steady. But at some point, you have done your best work.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And everything else is an echo or a shadow of that. And I try to be honest about the fact that that will happen to me. Maybe it's already happened to me.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  But in the meantime, I'm gonna keep doing my best, I'm gonna keep showing up. And I generally though, try not to think that much about how things are selling or how they're doing. You know, early on in my career, as I said, I was like, how do this do? What do they say about it? I would say I was probably 90% focused on that and 10% satisfied with the work that I did. I've tried to flip that. The irony has been, the less I care about the external results and the status or the recognition I get, the better I seem to have done. Right there, right now, maybe the number one in the US in June, which was actually a surprise. It was very cool, but it wasn't what I was thinking about. Now, maybe that's the high watermark. And if so, so be it.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I'll gladly take that as a high watermark. And in the meantime, I just wanna keep doing what I love doing. And I keep doing it if the audience was half as big, 10% as big, or 5% as big. Maybe if I got to a certain level, I'd start publishing and just do it for me. But I'd still be doing the thing, because I get the valid how to do it.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Just remind me of what the Stoics had to say about navigating profound loss in terms of losing loved ones.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, this is a timeless part of the human experience, unfortunately. Tadzien Markshu is a various half of his children. Sebka, various is only child.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  He writes a series, a very beautiful essays. They're a series called Consolations. He writes one to his mother when Sebka's exiled. He writes another to the daughter of a friend who died. The idea that the Stoics were feeling that they were unaffected by loss or pain or grief is maybe totally deluded by these beautiful, moving essays that I reread when I lose someone, that I ask the people and they answer this question. They're some of the most beautiful profound writings that the Stoics have ever produced. My favorite one, in one of the essays, Seck is writing to this woman who lost her father.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  She's talking about how the memory of him, you know, every time she thinks of him, she just breaks down crying, she's upset, she can't function. And he says, "Look, your father loved you a great deal. Obviously, he wants to be remembered by you. But if you told him, he says, "If he's up there somewhere, you could tell him that after he died, that his memory, whatever you thought of him, brought you crippling sadness and despair." And you're like, "What? That's not how I want this to go at all." We don't want people to be glad that they're gone. But our memory should be something positive, right? And I think if you can, I just think about that all the time. What would this person want me to think when I think of them?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  And so, the students are not saying they feel sadness and loss. Stuff it down, don't be unclean. Some of the only stories we have about art through this, through other historical sources, involve him crying over the loss of people that he loved. Tudor, these leaps over the victims of this plague, this devastating pandemic experiences. So the students were not unfeeling, they were not moved. But they did try to, when they were overcome by those feelings, and when they were crippled by them, try to go, "Okay." What, let me think through this, let me question some of these assumptions. And how can that happen if you want to process these feelings instead of denying it?

• 14:22Speaker 05

  Thank you for an amazing talk.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  My pleasure, thank you for coming.

• 14:26Speaker 05

  One thing that you talked about was saying no, and this is something I struggle with. I was wondering if we could role play?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:36Speaker 05

  With that in mind, would you like to do the lunch smile?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:42Speaker 05

  That's the question.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  You know, I'm sure you're very nice and cheerful and lovely. I've got other plans.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Some thoughts on saying, you know, first off, something I've learned. You don't have to reply at all. You can just ignore it. Sometimes it goes away. Or you can reply after the date. You can be like, "Sorry, I missed it."

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I've learned a couple things. One, you don't have to say sorry first. It's your time. It's your life. You know, we should spend it properly. So like I said, we would never let someone build on our property or steal our money. But we let people take our time as if it's... as if we have a limited amount of material.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  The other thing I have learned the hard way is when you explain, right? When you give reasons, what you're often telling that person is, "Please try to convince me that I should do it." And so getting clearer and more straightforward, realizing as they say that you know is a complete sentence is a powerful way to think about it. And so I appreciate any advice I was ever given.

• 16:04Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.