What Example Are You Setting? | Ask Daily Stoic

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

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  We find ourselves baffled by our politicians, by our bosses, by our leaders. Why don't they do something? Why don't they just do the right thing? Why are they always putting profits over people? Why do they always hedge their bets? You say this as you sit there in a job you've hated for the last five years. You say this when you avoid talking politics with your family, because it's unpleasant. You say this when you make all sorts of compromises and trade-offs that you know are not right. You say this while you're wearing clothes made in a sweatshop, pay your employees less than you could afford to, travel to countries with horrible human rights records, drive cars that are horrible for the environment. It's not that you're a bad person, it's that you have a reason for all those things. We all do. We have a million reasons.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Then we like to direct a very pointed, very black-and-white accusing finger at everyone else who dares to do the same. Marcus Aurelius reminds us that what other people do and say is not important, or rather, it's not as important as what we do and we say. What do we have control over? Those politicians thousands of miles away who are just barely interested in our votes? Or our own decisions and actions on a day to day basis. Don't waste your time in vain against the hypocrisy of others. Start with the hypocrisy in your own home because there's plenty of it there. What are you doing today, tomorrow? What injustices are you resolving in your own life? What evil are you ceasing to participate in?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  What good are you doing? What courage are you showing? Your answers, not politicians or leaders or your neighbors or your bosses are what counts. Matters what you do. You do now.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've been lucky enough, I've talked all over the world. I've talked to special forces operators. I've talked at the White House. I've talked to big companies. I've talked to little companies, talked to hedge funds. I've talked at family offices for billionaires. I've talked at conferences. I've talked everywhere, all over the world. It's cool. It's been a really cool experience. I hope it's cool for the people who come, but I would say it's the people it's not cool for is you. By that, I mean you can't normally come, right? Most of the events I do, by nature of them being private events, are not open to the public.

• 3:32Ryan Holiday?

  Can't buy tickets, couldn't get in unless you snuck in or you happen to work for those companies. So I'm really excited. I'm going to do two public facing dates here for sure. I think two more are being talked about, but I'm doing on September 17th. I'm at the Westlake Performing Arts Center here in Austin. Then in February, I'm in San Diego. And then the other ones are still being worked out. Grab tickets to that. I would love to see you here in Austin. Tickets are at dailystoiclive.com. And I'll link to that in today's show notes as well. Last time I did live dates, where was I? I was in London, I was in Ireland.

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  I was in the Netherlands. Before that, I did Australia. So when I do these live events, they're usually not in the US. So if you are in the US and you want to come see me, I would love to come see you and I would love to answer your questions, right? That's often what I'm bringing you in these Thursday Q and As is some of the questions that I get to answer when I do talk. So if you want to ask me a question, if you want to come see me give a talk, it's going to be one of the first times I've talked about the ideas in the new Wisdom book, Wisdom Takes Work. So again, grab tickets at dailystoiclive.com. And in the interim, here is some Q and A from a live event I did remotely, virtually. I was here in Texas. They were all over the world. I was talking to a company

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  that's one of the world's largest staffing agencies. So they had employees in countries all over the world. And they called in, they asked questions, I answered them. And it was really interesting. So I'll bring you some of that Q and A now. And I hope to see you on September 17th here in Austin, or in San Diego in February, or stay tuned to the landing page for the other events coming up soon.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  We'll probably get two questions and then we'll let you go. And thank you for your time, of course. Emotions often overrule our first action. So you talk about not sending that email, or maybe taking a second. What Stoicism guides do you have to help manage those anger, sadness, etc., before that action takes hold?

• 5:41Ryan Holiday?

  I think there's a magical tool that the ancients invented, and it's called taking a walk. And when I get outside and I get moving, before I do the thing that I was inclined to do, I tend to chill out, right? And I get some perspective and I get a little bit of space. Of course, journaling is a similar practice. It's just this idea of maybe pausing a little bit, or just questioning, you know, the Epicureans in the ancient world were sort of the rivals of the Stoics, but they get a bad rap, too. We tend to think of the Epicureans as these pleasure-loving hedonists. But actually, one of the things that Epicurus says is that before you engage in any sort of pleasure, you have to ask yourself,

• 6:24Ryan Holiday?

  how are you going to feel the next day? And so his point is like, Drinking might be pleasurable, but if you have to weigh the hangover that you feel the next day against it. And I think that's a really important, the ability to go, hey, I want to do this, or I'm thinking about doing this, or my emotions or my impulses are telling me to do this. But I also have the ability to think about how I'm going to think about it later. And I have to sort of weigh those things. And that that gives us the ability to go, okay, actually, that's probably a bad idea.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I love that. One final question. When you started this practice, Ryan, what was the biggest challenge you faced? And how did you overcome that?

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I would, I would say here that I didn't just start this practice, but I am currently engaged in this practice and very much a work in progress with this practice. Like, I hope that it doesn't come off that I am a master of Stoic philosophy. I would say I am a student of Stoic philosophy. My wife likes to joke that one of us is a Stoic and the other writes about Stoicism. And so I remain flummoxed and I make mistakes and I get caught up by things. I hit send on that email plenty of times, perhaps more times than I don't. So Stoicism is a work in progress. It is a philosophy that you're

• 7:48Ryan Holiday?

  supposed to be studying, rather than a philosophy that you have studied. But I will say, maybe just connecting to your guys' line of work, I spent most of my twenties as a marketer and I had a successful marketing career. And then I built a successful marketing agency. I worked with all sorts of exciting brands and people and public figures. But I wrestled with, as I think a lot of the people that you guys work with, and perhaps many of the people on this call wrestle with, which is like, just because you're really good at something, or just because something is lucrative, that that doesn't mean that's what you should spend your life doing. And how, if you feel called to make a change, even inside, you

• 8:28Ryan Holiday?

  know, a call from one company to the next, or one position to the next, to go from sales to a leadership role, or a support role, or a traveling role versus a stay at home, that, you know, there's all these changes we can make. And wrestling with making that choice, taking that leap. And one of the Stoic virtues is the virtue of courage. And obviously, this is not the same as courage as running into a burning building or onto the battlefield, but but working up that courage to make a change in your life, to try something new, to put yourself out there to to go towards more what you feel called to do. That's a really hard thing. But I think these, when we look back at our lives, those are the, those are the choices we're

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  really glad that we made.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Ryan, thank you so much. It's been really insightful to hear from you. And I can see in the chat that everyone has taken so much inspiration from your perspective.

• 9:27Ryan 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.